Triskaidekaphobia

An odd situation opened itself after the recent completion of my October writing exercise— a lingering question of presentation. This latest poetry experiment originally was set up to be displayed in a chronological fashion— that is, each numbered stanza represents a day from a quick series of thirteen days, thirteen chronological stanzas posted to a Tweeter spreadsheet. In this order, the ancient building shown in the poem is slowly constructed: from absence to presence.

However, the embedded theme suggests the chaotic nature of discord, disharmony: as a faulty record of personal recollection. At a reading performance, the intention was to shuffle between the various sections in a non-linear fashion, without an established pattern. With this notion, it seems more appropriate to place the individual sections in a random order, without any adjustment for the haphazard results.

To take this up another level, displaying the lines backwards produces an unusual, additional item of consideration. The theme of disorder and failure of recorded time shifts the reality of the situation: unrealized presence to anticlimactic absence. This in turn develops into a deconstruction of the shrine's image, a slow erasure.