Another rainy Tuesday

We're getting to the part of the academic year when some of us are set "free" to learn on our own for a few months -- read, write essays, ponder course design, gaze at our navels, refresh and renew.

As part of my new position, however, that will not include me ... for the first time in forever. I'll be coming in every weekday to take care of business. Usually, I'm not really all that good at summer "breaks."  Unstructured time is difficult for me. A certain kind of chewing restlessness sets in around the middle of June and begins to nibble at my brain function. Perhaps this structure and responsibility, this attention to long term projects, this more structured "learning," will be good for me.

I'll get back to you on that after I go through a few months of it. I think the trick will be in keeping track of what I should be accomplishing, setting goals for myself -- concrete, achievable goals -- and coming up with something like a time line. The thing about teaching is that you're regularly and predictably accountable to others. You've got deadlines and expectations and concrete goals (in writing).  I should make up a summer syllabus for myself, that is.

Going to do a word box poem today.  I'll select 5 words and see where they lead me.  The words are:
mail carrier, eyeball, coffee, condo, and lexicographer.

Oh boy.

*

Alter Ego

I'm a half-closed dysfunctional eyeball
floating in anti-matter, a destroyed and

destructive god of the anti-domestic,
a ripped shirt, laddered tights, highball

sucking pierce machine, the lexicographer
of your personal apocalypse, composing

all the terms for disaster known to human
unkindness, the mail carrier come with letters

from the unconscious. Inside this cardboard condo
you call a mind, I nudge awake your incipient

chaos with a shot of scalding espresso, whip you
into several frenzies, until you're knocked into

the ditch like a bundle of bones -- emotional
roadkill.  I'm your alter ego, your inner child,

your id, your dark side, your shadow, your
unforgotten Other -- all the parts of you

you thought you'd buried. Surprise!
This is me, now, ringing your bell:

the walking dead, the dirt and fingernails
and fungus and rot you thought

(all those years ago) you'd left behind.

missing the poetry fix

Hello, darlings.

It's now May and I'm going to confess that I miss the ability to center myself every day with a poetry exercise.  (Did you know, however, that if you post a poem to your blog you can't submit it to a poetry journal for potential publication? Nope. See, self publication counts. Oh well.)

Yesterday, instead of writing a poem, I did a guided meditation in my office to "rededicate myself to lovingkindness."  Oh, snap -- new age strikes. Instead of being loving and kind, however, as the soothing Irish voiced man suggested, I soured by mid-day and by the end of the day, when I arrived into Dave's space, I was the same old rant bag as usual.

I've got about 10 minutes before I have to head into an action packed day. My Google calendar is a solid blob from 10-3:30 or so, with a small break before a dinner gig. All of this celebrating is making my waist thick and the numbers on the scale rise. I couldn't zip my jeans yesterday. Blargh.

Maybe I'll write a poem a week now. How's that sound?

Today's challenge:  What does your shadow do while you're sleeping?

*

While I'm Sleeping

My shadow stretches out
to fill me,
leaking

into my fingers and toes,
erasing
my wrinkles,

returning me to a dewy
youth.
It's a heavy liquid

that defies gravity,
lifting me
like dream ether

into strange heights
where flickering images
mix

past and present,
hinting at the future
(black mirrors

hold a world
of bending shadows
that touch me

with chilly
fingertips)
when I will be

all shadow
all
the time.