One of the things that I used to do was take a piece of music or a poem that I had memorized and eliminate or modify the line breaks in order to see if it made sense when rendered into a normal conversational style. The best music and poetry usually do.

This is also a good way to evaluate your own poetry and work some of the kinks out of it. If you kill the line breaks and try to recite the poem as though it were part of a conversation, the weaker areas will sometimes jump out at you.

I've done this with one of my old poems... If this sort of thing entertains you (i.e. if you enjoyed trying to piece together my sestina), then you might enjoy trying to figure out what form this poem was written in before I edited out the line breaks:

If everyone who thought they knew the things that moved inside my head would only take a moment to discuss these things with me instead of cursing me behind my back...

Oh, what's the point? I've always read that no one ever knows they lack perception. This is true, and more, we do not want to know. We stack our lies on top of lies. We bore our friends and think that we are kind. We make assumptions and ignore dissenting facts... but I don't mind.

It sets me free. It makes me grow. You can't see that? You must be blind, and that is not forgiven...

So just consider this my warning to everyone who thinks they know.

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