Amplified Part 2, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

My baby, split in two, half gone
This is not justice, meeting halfway
This is a crime, raping my psyche

You deceived me, suckered me
I saved and saved and saved
And you taped over and over

Erasing everything before
Smearing the black chalkboard
Throwing everything into

The trash bin, over and over
And over, letting me think
I was simply adding another car

To the train, on the right track
And all that work, 2 months worth
Gone, gone, gone!

You use 30 years of poetry
As your tinder, kindle, switchgrass
Dropping the diamond ring

Down the sewer grate
Have my legs, have my arms
Have my sight, have hearing

Leave my poetry alone!
(end)

For the past 2 months I thought I had been meticulously saving each copy of each poem from my original host thread at Rational Responders. And I seemed to have saved everything correctly, UNTIL….. I checked my old laptop hard drive and my backup thumb drive. GONE, ALL THAT WORK GONE, cannot find it on either.

Fortunately I did print out each poem after copying it. AND my friend John saved almost half of them on a backup thumb drive he still has. BUT it still means I have to go back and redo all that work again to get back to my current tally of total poems. I cannot begin to tell you how pissed I am at myself and how I had been literally crying for the past 3 hours.

I don’t have kids so my poetry are my kids and the thought of losing them is death to me.