Easy Green Proof Part 5

I concluded the last section or stanza of the poem by removing yet another line from the originally published version, which means I expurgated a line from every section of the poem in the re-write; which is a lot of flaky old dandruff of former self to be getting rid of in the process. Once again, in this section, the removed line had overtones of my trying to be a New York poet, someone like Ted Berrigan, able to cavalierly use stereotyped "black" diction because this language really does exist and somehow has to be put in its proper relation to the all the other things we can possibly say with our mouths... I see/saw this as a utopian poetic idea of embracing rather than trying to educate our way out of the undergrowth. But now, at this point in time, I know that I personally can't shift the burden, as it were, in the way someone like Ted Berrigan could so easily. In my poetry it just looks awkward (but see previous posts for wanting to look awkward) or worse. So

I write words just like these ones

Because I'm afraid of myself

But these ones are different

They afraid of they own selves

Like huge potato bugs

becomes finally

I write words just like these ones

Because I'm afraid of myself

But these ones are different

Like huge potato bugs

The fact is, the expurgated line didn't work, poetically speaking let alone politically. But it is obviously in the final version the unspoken repartee to the line "Because I'm afraid of myself": afraid of my own tendencies, as it were, my subconscious bigotries, my uses as a historical repository for, really, the diction of African-American comedians in the seventies, the politically incorrect period that followed the politically correct period so closely that those of us who were suburban white kids during the Civil Rights movement couldn't quite catch the waves right, thought we could get away with saying the same kinds of stuff, not even knowing what it all meant or resonated as, and like bad surfers rolled on under...