I don't have a job yet, but the exciting news is that I started attending a free creative writing class, so I am writing again, I mean really writing, and feeling alive again, I mean really alive. I want to share a piece I wrote in a free-write exercise tonight. The prompts were "I believe," and "I didn't expect that to happen." I sort of did a stream-of-consciousness thing, and I like it. Here it is:

Here I sit, facing a green wall in the basement of the library. What color green I cannot even name. Maybe it's somewhere between a lime and a sea green? Or spring green on a cloudy day. Yeah, that's it. Spring green on a cloudy day. I did sort of expect something different than another prompt exercise, something more off-color, as is this green wall. But here I sit, facing the same wall for an hour and fifteen minutes. If Stella and Katie and Percy all stood against the wall, they'd each be half camouflaged according to the greens of their clothes: one top and two bottoms.
I bite hard into a pretzel, the crunch reverberates in my head, in the quietness of scribbling pens on paper. Pens on paper, that's what I like to hear. It's why I suck on my pretzel rather than chew.
Why is this so hard to write what I believe? I believe in this: writing. Writing and nothing else. No, that's not true. I believe in love, in magic, and, quite naively, in the goodness of people. I believe in Mother Earth, in music, in poetry. I believe in life, most days. I am here today, and I believe, no, I know it is because of writing.
I write to process; I write to know; I write to show; I write to tell. I write because I can, because I have a voice, and because I believe in that voice, my voice, and in the right to express it, shout it if I want to, or, more politely, write it in my journal.
How many lives now have been lost so I can have my polite and civil freedom to write my voice? How many young voices squandered, parched and lost in the desert? Dried up tongues in sand so the rest of the free world can thirst and thrive on oil. Oh, Christ! I don't want this, I don't want to go there now. I still want to believe the world is good. I want to believe in fairies and angels and peace. In the power of my son's laughter and in the protection of my love. But Cindy Sheehan knows, love is not enough. Love is not enough unless it has a voice. And voice is not enough unless you use it. And you can only use it if silent people fight terrorists and spy on our library cards, all to insure our freedoms and civil liberties. You know, the ones that make this country so great. The country that gives us each a voice in our votes (granted it took women and minorities almost two hundred years to have voices and votes, but you know, uh, what would our President say?). But we do have a voice, one voice, one vote, right? We do have a right, a vote, a voice. Right? Write?

11 August 2006
Well it’s finally time for me to grow up and stop this fantasizing about being a writer, a poet, a professor of such…I am getting a real job. That’s it, I am. And I am going to like it. I am. I will write in my spare time while bringing in money to the family income, saving for a house, planning a new baby, saving for Emmett’s education…you know, the responsible, adult things to do. And it’s about time, I mean I am turning thirty this year. Hmm. Time for that necessary loss of lost dreams, lost visions, lost self, of youth and spontaneity, and all that stuff that comes with not having any grey hair. Yes, I have grey hairs. Yes, I am reading Harry Potter books. And yes, I steer clear of mosh pits at concerts, even wincing when I see youths stage dive, watching them disappear into the crowd thinking, gosh, I hope they don’t get hurt. What a mother I am! I mean, I’m not their mother, why do I act like I am mother of the world? Am I just joined in that universal mother role where all we do is worry about the life on this planet? How is it that women, mothers, are more concerned with saving and preserving life than the men who are in power around the globe right now? It really does take a mother, a human who has been through the depths of pain and labor it takes to birth a child, a woman who has given small pieces of herself to nurse and raise the child in health and sickness and sadness and learning and teaching and loving and cuddling, and no, we will not let other people destroy this life we put so much of ourselves into. I know how Cindy Sheehan feels. When you destroy a child, a part of the mother dies, too. How many children and mothers must suffer before we realize we’re killing our own mothers. When we destroy ourselves we destroy our creator, Gaia, Earth, the one mother everywhere. I can’t stand it anymore. I became a mother to join the life-giving force, to share my love with a new little person of pure love, and here I am, I have to sit here and watch the death toll of sons and daughters rise. I guess if I had a full-time job I wouldn’t have time to think about things like this anymore.

So the poetry slam was fun but I didn't get the reaction I thought I would from the audience. I read the Sestina, the one on this blog about the guy from the Lovebomb who was the most "unromantic lover...his dick went off too soon," and I figured everyone would laugh, but it was like crickets out there. What the hay?

Hey poets, slammers, crazy folks, whatever, I just wanted to tell you all about the upcoming Poetry Slam hosted by Geof Hewitt at the Northeast Kingdom Music Festival this weekend in East Albany, VT. It was great fun last year, and Slam Greatness himself was there, I am talking about Saul Williams! If you have never heard or seen him perform, please go to your local library or video store right now and look for Slam Nation, a documentary about the National Poetry Slam, in which local Calais man Geof Hewitt has performed in! So anyway, come to the festival: camping, music, theater, and on Saturday at 1:15 there will be a fine poetry slam for anyone to join or watch. I will be there and maybe I'll actually win this time. Though that's not really what it's all about.

Middle of January (We've all been there)

I am black ink
dark goddess cloak
with six little seeds
bittersweet
icy heart.

I am unforgiving
of the force that pulls me down
and at the same time
in love.

If only I could turn everything as black
as my kitten's round eyes
with her two black lines
that run down from the corners
as if she's been crying inky tears.

Sylvia--or as we call her at home
baby kitty Sylvia--dark namesake
mother of starkness
darkness in her ink
she grabbed at it and came up
with a chokekold of blue-flamed gas.

It's this heat we crave
in the middle of January.