What I am doing

Insomnia seems to be working for me. I have written more poems in the past week than I have since college. The poetry workshop I have been taking online with Gotham has really helped. It is nice to be a community where I don't have to hide my intellect and no one makes me feel like maggot meat. Since losing my job, I seem to be getting my confidence back. I had been so jealous of one of my single friends and her fabulous life. My life seems so tame. I have been in love with the same man for sixteen years. We have a wonderful life together, but it is rather a domestic love.  He is my best friend with benefits, but there is no drama, no tension that helps the writer write.

 

The problem is that I am a writer and a poet right down to my soul. No one wants to read about characters that lead normal lives. I need to write is part of me.

 

Thirty-five years old and I am still that fat girl, who struggled to not show her brains to much, so the boys would like her. I needed their approval. I still crave approval. That's something I have to work on as I will not a successful writer and poet until I can accept myself.

Coda

Dear Reader,

 

 

I googled him last night. Needless to say, I found him. The song may still retain its power to move me, but the picture of 37 year old guitarist playing for a cover band that is opening for what's left of the Beach Boys in August left me cold. His hair that was golden wheat spilling down his back is still long what is left of it, but far from golden. He seems stylistically trapped in the 80s while he has aged perceptably. Memory glitters in the face of faded reality. I hope he is happy.

Can't Sleep

A memory that I had locked inside my heart close to twenty years ago has risen to the front of my mind by a song. I heard Kathy's Song tonight and I felt a knife slip inside my skin and twist.

I am seventeen again and very much in love with a young man named Tim, who lived in my dorm. He had the face of a Raphaelite angel framed  with a halo of blonde hair that fell past his shoulders. He was a music major that played acoustic guitar and sang a clear tenor that I drank into my soul like water.

 

The first time I heard him play was at a coffeehouse for the Manuscript Society, the literary magazine at Wilkes. I was one of their poets. I heard him play many songs that night, but when he played Kathy's Song, I thought he was singing right to me. At the time, I didn't know that it was not one of his original compositions.

I thought he had written it for me. I was a fool in an impossible love.

 

My love for him was painful. He was the first man I had professed my love to openly and unashamedly, one night in his room as I sat on his bed. He told me that I shouldn't love him. He didn't deserve my love. He told me of his drug addiction and time in rehab. He told me to save my heart for someone worthy of me. I cried and cried that night and tonight.

 

 

 

What's been going on in the world

About twenty five years ago, my mother, who was single at the time, was dating a high school guidance counselor, who turned out to be part of the IRA (which quickly ended the relationship) said to her about terrorism- "It is hate that drives them. Even if you gave them everything they ever wanted for their cause, they would find another cause. The hate inside them is that strong."

 

That's what has been dominating my mind today.

What a week!, part 1

This was supposed to be a quiet week to get work done. Supposed to be.

First, Mom called to tell me that my Uncle Donald had died out in LI, a six plus hour drive from here. She was demanding that I tell her what my plans were before my cousins sent me the details. So, I had a fight with her. I wanted to go the mass, but not the wake. John had planned a mystery date with me that he couldn't reschedule the same time as the wake.

The mystery date was a screening of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Philly. Wonderful film adaptation of a wonderful book. Restaurant afterward near Fairmont was a disappointment. Next time we'll go back to Rembrandt's. Went home and slept for two hours. The alarm went off at 3:00 am so we could drive to New Brunfus and catch the 5:40 to Penn Station. From Penn, it was the LIRR to Amityville, which was two blocks from the church.

My brother wasn't expecting me, so he spread my truck troubles as that I had stopped to help some guy, not my SIL. I popped his bubble. I am so glad I went. We stopped at Tumulty's on my way back home for a much better and much cheaper dinner.

Interior Monologues

I read the news and try not to think,

Of what might have been.

I look inside instead.

 

I pray

My voice in the winds

Hoping to be heard.

 

I resist the feelings that threaten

to drown me

I will prevail.

 

Barbarians are at the gate

throwing temper tantrums and toxic volleys

Demanding their seats at my table.

 

I must regret

That there is nothing available

Today or any other day.

 

A Quiet Fourth

My DH and I spent the holiday at a picnic at our church family's house. Just didn't feel up to fireworks this year. Too many years shilling water and sodas at my brother's shaved ice stand has just burned me out on this holiday.

Trying something new

I am trying to email my blog entries to update my blog. Let's see how it works.

Working my way through graduate school

I am working for the Center for Innovation and entrepreneurship at Rowan. In return, they pay for my tuition up to nine credits and a tidy stipend. It's the closest I have ever come to being paid for writing.