Poetry Composition and Editing
An Essay for the White Rabbit Poetry Society/ A Writer's Voice Monday Featured Poet
Original Post
Note From the Editor:
We are thrilled to present A Writer’s Voice in this week’s Monday Featured Poet. He is a published poet of many masterful techniques, from Sonnets to free verse. It is truly a pleasure to get a sneak peek into his writing process. Please take a few moments to visit A Writer’s Voice, subscribe, and read his work.
A few words from Chris:
First, I want to thank Dorie Snow/雪多丽 and the White Rabbit Poetry Society for hosting me. This is truly an honor. And I am so happy I got to write this. Anytime I get to discuss my writing process is a fun time. I post here on Substack, but I also have an Instagram where I post shorter work:
Poetry Composition and Editing
An Essay for the White Rabbit Poetry Society
Feb 15, 2026
I remember watching a rose assemble itself out of the universe.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
I wasn’t in my body at the time—call it astral, call it chemical, call it one of those moments where the veil lifts just long enough to remind you it was never solid to begin with. Gears screamed where petals should have softened. Metal folded itself into beauty without patience for soil or weather or time. A rose shaped by motion, by pressure, by inevitability.
One moment out of fourteen billion years, and somehow, I was there to see it.
That trip didn’t give me answers. It didn’t hand me a truth or a lesson or a comforting takeaway. What it gave me was a way of seeing. Something clicked—not spiritually, not mystically, not in the greeting-card sense. It was mechanical. Structural. Like my brain recognized a pattern and couldn’t unsee it.
And almost immediately, the question wasn’t what does this mean?
It was what do I do with this?
That’s usually how my writing starts. I don’t begin with a message. I begin with an image that refuses to leave me alone. Then I try to understand it—not academically, not by hunting symbols, but instinctively. What nerve did this touch? What is it circling? How do I translate it into something honest?
In this case, the answer was a poem:
I’ve seen a horrifying thing.
I’ve seen a rose up close,
born not from earth or rain,
but from cosmic dust—
spinning gears where its petals should be.
No dirt beneath its artificial flesh.
No rot. No risk. No waiting cost.
It opens and closes on cue
and never knows what it has lost.
Give me a real one.
Picked straight from the bush.
So, I can feel it breathe its last breath
in my palm
and cry because I know it can never be repaired.
When I wrote it, I wasn’t trying to be clever. I was just describing what I saw as accurately as I could. The violence inside the beauty. The perfection that felt empty. The way something can function flawlessly and still feel dead.
For me, that rose became about art.
About the difference between creation that comes from the heart and creation that comes from the wallet. I can buy a rose—fake, mechanical, guaranteed. It will never wilt at the wrong time. It will never ask anything of me beyond money.
Or I can buy a real rose.
One that needs water not once, but again and again. One that asks for patience I don’t always have, and forgiveness when I forget. One that leans toward the light even after it’s been cut from its roots—still trying, still believing the sun will come back for it. A rose that can die no matter how carefully I love it.
And when it dies, I don’t throw it away.
I bury it.
So I went back and reworked the poem.
“I’ve seen a horrifying thing.
I’ve seen a rose up close.”
I took horrifying out. I didn’t think the reader needed to be told how to feel. Then I realized I needed a word before rose. I tried mechanical. Too many syllables. Too clunky. It didn’t sing.
Then I thought of A Clockwork Orange.
Cassandra Clare’s A Clockwork Angel.
Clockwork.
That worked.
Now it wasn’t just a rose in space. It was the Clockwork Rose. The “the” mattered.
It gave the image weight—inevitability. And once that clicked, the form followed. A sonnet. Fourteen lines. Constraint. Rhythm. A structure that could hold the pressure.
For rhyme, I use everything. The dictionary. The thesaurus. Hip-hop. Eminem. Biggie. Big Pun. Not to steal lines—but to study movement. How syllables hit. How sound carries meaning. How rhythm keeps a line alive.
And yes, sometimes I use Safari. Sometimes I type what rhymes with this. Laugh if you want. The mind can only hold so many words before it starts looping. Tools aren’t shortcuts—they’re extensions.
Rhythm comes next. What kind of rhythm am I going for—Dr. Seuss? Dickinson? Angelou? Poe?
Will it sing or rhyme?
When I was a kid, I used Emily Dickinson’s poems as a skeleton for my own flow. The syllable count. The internal music. The way a poem could sound like a tune without ever announcing itself.
“Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me.
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality—”
I would repeat it as I wrote, just to hear how my sentences should sound. I’d fit my words into that rhythm. If you’re ever trying to understand rhythm, I’d suggest doing the same. You could try it with The Raven. The only issue is, I almost lost the letter A when I tried. So, I don’t know. Be careful. The Raven is harder stuff.
From there, it’s plug and play. Rewrite. Rewrite again. Five bad sentences for one good one. Fourteen lines of that, and eventually, I landed here:
A Clockwork Rose, a Poem
December 23, 2025
Thank you so much for reading! This poem was originally posted on my instagram:
I’ve seen the clockwork rose up close,
born screaming gears, not earth or rain,
a blossom taught to counterfeit
the patience suffering explains.
It’s pressed from profit, cut from code,
each petal timed, each color sold,
a thousand blooms per blinking shift,
all flawless, vacant, bought, and cold.
No dirt beneath its polished skin,
no rot, no risk, no waiting cost,
it opens on command, on cue,
and never knows what it has lost.
Give me the rose that breaks the hand,
that learns to die to learn to stand.
One last thing matters to me more than almost anything: the final line.
That’s where the reader decides whether to stay or leave carrying something with them. I write endings like this might be the only thing someone ever reads from me—because it might be. There are no guarantees of a second poem. A second page. A second chance.
So the last line has to hold.
If it works.
If it doesn’t, nothing else matters. Even if they never come back, I want it to linger—quietly, stubbornly—doing its work long after the page is closed.
That’s why the poem ends here:
Give me the rose that breaks the hand,
that learns to die to learn to stand.
Note from the Editor:
It has been an honor to host A Writer’s Voice, please take a few minutes to visit, subscribe and read his work. Thank you, A Writer’s Voice for your time and this amazing look into your process! We wish you all good success on your recently published book!
I am so grateful you are here. Please leave a message if you are inspired. I would love to see what you write. The White Rabbit Poetry Society is a place to find some inspiration and friends. Don’t be shy, add links to your poetry!
Thank you so much for featuring me. This is an honor.
Lovely