Is this the first day of winter?

The cold front has moved in and brought the rain. Where was all this rain when we needed it over the summer? Our Texas forests burned unchecked for weeks and people feared for their lives. Well it is here now and I am thankful. On to better days and nights of cooler weather.

This is what I do

Last night I went to Taft St. Coffee house to hear some poetry from the local poet's scene. It was amazing! I have been a part of another poet's group that meets every month for the past three years. While I have learned a great deal from that group and we have formed a bond it was refreshing to go out and hear other voices. I was particulary impressed with a young group of poets who call their group Meta-Four. They are talented, fresh, and speak directly from the heart. Sometimes I think the world of writers is such a lonely one and we hole up in our rooms writing our poems and it gets frustrating when the words just won't form a cohesive flow. I know I sometimes feel my poetry is forced. But these energetic young people have that spark that comes from youth and their experiences. It's great. I enjoyed myself and they just serve as inspiration to keep doing what I do.

What do you do?

I have been teaching for the better part of a decade. Now I am without a job. The teaching crisis is at its full peak. Our law-makers consider education the last priority and have decided it's okay to fire teachers and cram more students into a classroom. So I am facing unemployment, general anxiety about the future, and a sense of floundering. What else can I do? I am a teacher. I love being a teacher. Maybe it's time to focus my energies on other things.

Has it been that long?

I stayed away too long. I have no real excuse only to say I had other committments I needed to take care of that took priority. Anyways, I am back. Although, I warn you I may disappear again. I attended an art show yesterday. I missed it. God, I didn't know how much I missed it until I was there among the artists and in their studios. I used to be married to an artist and we attended art shows every week. Ten years I did the dutiful wife thing and stood by my artist husband and attended all his openings, his friends' openings, the open studios arts' day, etc...Then we divorced I closed myself off from the art scence for another ten years. Yesterday I got a taste for the life again. I can't live without poetry, art, or music in my life. It is something that resides deep within me and I have to free the creative mind in order to get on with my life.

I Am A Red Satin Shoe (8/9/07;wp)

I really like this one. It was an exercise during the writing academy over the summer where we all had to pick a shoe from a table and pretend to be that shoe. Of course everyone should know which one I zeroed in on.

Oh yeah, Saturday night. I wonder what dance floor it'll be tonight? Hopefully a better surface than last week's slumming disaster. Honestly what was she thinking dragging our well-respected 2-inch heels into Lola's? I thought she'd outgrown that purple-fenced sleazy dive 15 years ago. But noooo, there we were walking over cracked cement floors and resting our dainty thin-skinned feet against the graffitied bar. She was looking around the place scoping out the tattoos, long-tailed jeans wearing tight-assed muscle boys. Okay so maybe Lola's isn't bad in a pinch but still we've come a long way. While she was training her eagle eyes on the merchandise some steel-toed, seen better days pair of Doc Martens tried to cozy up to me. I stubbornly kept my pointed red toes facing the bar. I think I actually read "The time is nigh. Repent! Repent!" How did that get written down there? And I didn't know Doc Martens knew the word "nigh". Thankfully we left Lola's intact after almost getting a beer bottle smashed across our delicate satins.
Oh, she's getting the red sleeveless dress that goes so well with our red satin finish and sparkly studded ankle straps. Oh, I know where we're going.

Poetry forms (9/15/07;wp)

I start out with words never ideas. The ideas come from the words. Sometimes the ideas bubble and ferment but never get made into wine. Time to make the wine.
Time
Wine
Tine
Wime

God, I am tired. Hungover. Achy. Jumped up and danced on a bar last night then fell down. The sweet, mechanical engineering master's degreed dark-skinned boy helped me up off the floor. Precious boys. Sweet young boys. I want to rub their arms and chests and stomachs.

Okay back to poetry forms. Sometimes I write ragged lines. I imagine lines with the edges torn off. My mind wanders. Let's see...green shirt that says "Books Rule" on it. What about "Book Rules"? He has a large nose. Brown hair with ragged lines cut in the back making it wavy and upturned. He wears glasses. White skin. Looks like pure white dough before it's kneaded and baked when the dusty white flour still coats it. On his arms the dark hair stands out.

No, no, no! Images of my ex-lover are creeping in. The old desire, the desire for his long hairy body. No! I hate him now. I despise him. He of the low brain, low class, and even lower tastes.

I'm rambling again. I'm hot and hungover sitting in a poetry class learning all my sonnets again. Sunbrained. HA! Just came up with that one.

The Beach House (9/16/07;wp)

I'm back in the same beach house as last year with my friends and their children. The early morning sun makes my eyes squint; forehead furrow. A shrimp boat out on the glass-surfaced water reflecting the sun, the boat like a painting found in the seashell souvenir shops along The Strand. I listen to the waves. They're saying "We rise and fall but it's more than that. We move through wind, get caught up in the currents, carried along, our liquid selves meshing with the air. We fold up and over and head for the shore. We want to come ashore and spread out over the sand. We're in constant motion not stopping even for a day."

I do enjoy my coffee. Not with milk though but there's nothing for it. No creamer of any kind in this beach house. Kids slathered in sunscreen. A kitchen full of food I can't eat. But it's so worth it because my friends' husbands tell me I look great. So I think giving up all the food I like to eat to get a spectacular body is well worth the sacrifice. Hmm...maybe that's what my sonnet should be about. All the food I love but can no longer have.

Cheese: Gouda, Parmesan, asiago, bleu, all the rank smelly cheeses out at Central Market

Bread: Big, doughy, loaves soaked in olive oil mixed with spices

Crackers: Ritz, Saltines, Wheat Thins, Goldfish, Cheeze Nips, Triscuits with slices of ham, Colby Jack cheese, and olives with garlic in the pits

Chips: Pringles, the whole can, sour cream 'n' onion, bbq, salt & vinegar, habanero, jalapeno, so much salt on my tongue, splitting it open with fissures like the earth after an earthquake, my lips cracking apart, not bleeding only because I saturate them in lip balm

Eggs I can eat but not the way Johnny is eating them, baked in a dish with cheese, cream, sausage, and picante sauce smothering the top. Ah, I miss all that heavy food but heavy on the outside turns me heavy inside and out. The salt fills my cells and makes them expand pushing out all ridges, rolls, and my flesh hangs and jiggles. But with light food my body becomes light. The flesh shrinking, the curves becoming rounded, and soft. Not bulging and bulky.

Cake: dough turned black with chocolate and the sugar icing coating the top

Cookies: chocolate chip, macadamia nut, snicker doodle, cinnamon

Pie: cherry, apple, blueberry, lattice pies with that delicious crust

Nuts: pistachios, pecans, almonds, peanuts, cashews, especially peanuts in a bowl with Tabasco sauce and lemon juice. Eating the whole bowl, my lips, tongue, and throat on fire. If I let that happen then the oils in the peanuts would act like a catalyst to produce the oils in my face. Bursting, like tiny oil wells, all the acne ruining my face. No, that will never happen.

Back from the dead

No one actually ever comes back from the dead. But here I am saying it as a way to tell you all that I am coming back and staying this time. The last 8 months have been hell. There is no other way to put it. I lost my father and I also lost my lover. I'll say his name now, Michael T., and I don't care who knows it or who goes and tattles to his girlfriend about us. Fuck him. I'll catch up with all that later. For now I want to say that I am free of that bastard. That lying, cheating, horrid, pathetic excuse for a man.

I will be putting up my writing practices on the blog. All the stuff in my head. All the stuff I write raw from the depths. It's all going to come out. Names might be mentioned. But maybe not. How will the writing practice be distinguishable from the regular blog? Well now I just don't know. Let's see how it goes.