golden threads

finally up from my late nap (why i put these things off and upset my schedule, i don't know). and an email from a poet i met recently awaited me.

i forget i've got some stuff published now. and it was about that.

curious the place of being relatively unknown. i was at the poetry center yesterday and took to the mic, a mic many great GREAT by any definition, poets have read at: ginsberg, stern, kunitz, mazziotti-gillan, flynn, just to name the few off the top of my head.

i walk up there and read something, anything, at this point, i can't keep straight what i read where. used to be i'd only read a piece once. never twice to the same audience. but i've bent that rule some now, as i simply cannot keep it straight.

sold another chapbook and bequeathed one to another fellow poet. a downpayment for her published work someday.

we must believe in each other, if we don't, who will?

i am amazed at how strong the poets i know are, and how some of those very same poets doubt themselves, to the point of self-censorship. even refusal to read in public, when their works are amazing.

it seems i have the opportunity to be a brazen reader, regardless of who's sitting in the audience. from that perspective i can encourage other poets to step up to the mic and take ownership of it.

i want to challenge other poets to do this. if i can, they can. poetry is no respecter of persons. get your ass up to that podium and read.

breathe and read.

i did not feel particularly called to read yesterday, that was the odd thing. most of the time i feel this compulsion, this inner urge to be heard.

yesterday, i could have passed. would have passed if i hadn't signed up, lucky number 13, that's me.

but it was also the last open reading of the season at the poetry center and as such, something worth my efforts even though i feel indifferent about it.

the session didn't soothe me as it usually does, perhaps because i was racing to get work stuff done when the event started so i slipped in late. i had business to attend to and could not separate the two yesterday.

i am the kind of person who needs great divides between functions. my work must remain at my work. but it has the ability to ooze out into other parts of my life, as it did yesterday. when your boss has a speed dial number on your phone, that's a bad sign.

i'm probably working way too much, but it seems when i don't work, things go wrong with the accounting angle of the place. i'm glad they don't happen on my watch, but i'm troubled they are happening at all. it's a simple matter of equipping your people to do the job thoroughly. if not in fact, giving them the adequate tools, communicating the instructions clearly.

i'm not so sure any of that is done at my job. my boss is doing her best, but there are a lot of gaps happening. all the time i spend there makes me certain i can't do this for the rest of my life. it is merely a stepping stone somewhere.

where?

i don't know.

i can't see beyond the moment.

but i keep believing there is a pattern being woven, that, perhaps, i am weaving. though the design is a mystery to me, it is, by the diligent effort of my hand coming together even now.

and yesterday, the golden thread of poetry was primary.

for that, i am grateful.

(today it plays no subtler role, i guess that could be said of all my days, but days when i take the mic are certainly highlights.)

peace. out.