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there is some relief in it, finishing. having jumped through all the hoops set before me. i floundered this semester, didn't perform to my own expectations and that is a hard load for me to carry. i want to surpass my own expectations. but they are high.

even at work, i don't compliment much, until it is earned. i don't bullshit and tell people their work is the bomb when it simply isn't. i can't start now making bullshit my rule, because it never will be.

i pose a question to my prof this last time around, which i believe is the source of some of my confusion. what is expected of the writing in this short semester window? of the sixty poems i produce, that they be original and current, or that they be the strongest i've got. because, what i create in the crunch of a semester cannot all be publishable. never is that my goal, i think it beyond the reach of many writers. so i went with, an accurate, honest window into my writing, which is the more vulnerable place for me.

i think what these professors forget from time to time is that we are actually artists. that this is more than just a craft class. that the emotional core of our work resides in us, not on the page. shut me down and it's tough to regain that momentum. my work in semester was compared to my pre-semester residency packet which was culled from at least two years work. the best of two years will always be better than sixty under the gun in semester poems. the comparison is unfair. as much as i hate that word. professors should know this.

if there is some tempering of souls that needs to take place, if we are supposed to toughen up to withstand this process, then i say that is bullshit too. what is needed is trust. violate it and it is hardwon a second time.

i went straight to a book i'd been checking and rechecking all semester in hopes of reading, but finally gave up a couple weeks ago and returned. it was nice today to sit with it and delve in. definately what i need to be reading right now.

i am intrigued by certain things, this being one of them.

now to the endings i must write. the words will come. they have begun.

and the tip leaf tree's scar from where the limb was removed has weathered and toughened. proud flesh. and i wish it were that time again when the memory lived. i wish that more than you know. but for me, now, the key, i think is letting the memory go. that is not accomplished by denial, but rather, acknowledgement. today felt like the beginning of that.

i must go back to the old places and leave your memory there.