Long Live the Poet

Trying to make the best of a three hour flight delay. I hear there is surly weather awaiting me in New York, something having to do with ice. Already, my ass (literally) smells like starbucks and my pinkie toe is throbbing. My head feels bowling ball heavy. As I approached the waiting area at gate C3, out of all the available seats I sat in a chair that felt damp. I jumped up, saw the wet spot. Hoped it wasn't piss. Grazed my hand over my wet ass and smelled South America.

Dizzy from Ibprofen. On New Years Day I sprained my pinkie toe while doing karioki. I was doing some interpretive dance to augment my already stellar rendition of Boyz II Men's "On Bended Knee" and I stubbed my pinkie against a chair. So much for fame.

So I've been limping ever since. Yesterday I couldn't walk without wincing from the pain. I've been taking drugs and now i can walk. As a result, I''m in West Palm Airport listening to 90's music and feeling dizzy and drugged.

This time was so necessary. If not for my family, I would keep going, going and not take a break from the grind. I took 13 days off of work. I didn't ask for the time off, I just took it. If i had asked, they would have said no. So, I walked in one day and declared that I was going to be gone for 2 weeks during the holidays and had already booked my ticket and would prepare all of the activities for the kids in advance and make sure my staff was briefed. I did all of this before I left. I fulfilled my promises and felt no guilt on the plane ride to florida.

I left NYC in the midst of the MTA strike. I wasn't really affected by the strike, sorry to say. No stories of walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in the blueback cold. No tales of hitchhiking my way up town. All I could say was that I missed a doctor's appointment. I got to work by catching a ride with my friend Holiday, who works with me and drives. As Holiday and I cruised through the strangely empty streets of upper manhattan, we mused: what will we tell our kids about the historic transit strike of 2005? We laughed about all of the stories we couldn't tell with a clear conscience: the 20 mile walk to work in the snow, sleet, hail, rain. Tiny brown specks in that exodus across the Brooklyn Bridge. Riding with scary strangers, 6, 7 to a car.

The airport is a grave of waiting people. There are screaming children everywhere. I just saw a young boy throw a huge tantrum in the middle of the terminal. He was throwing himself on the floor and every time his mother tried to pull him up he wouldn't let her and would fall back on the floor. She was really patient with him. It's times like this I can't picture myself with children. But then I did. I pictured my wailing child. I pictured myself walking away without looking back, knowing he would follow. I sent the woman my advice silently. [I]Just walk away lady, [/I]I said. He’ll follow. Finally she did. Walked away. And he followed, bellowing, but he followed.

I don't do the New Years Resolutions thing. A lot of my friends don't either. Maybe we're too cool for that illusion now, tired of these shallow promises we make to ourselves just because a ball drops in the middle of Manhattan. Regardless of how cool we are I think that most of us have some sense of self reflection as the year slams itself shut. I think we all devise ways to improve our lives and find short cuts to our futures.

So, having said that, I'm not going to call this a New Years Resolution. I'm calling it a birthday wish. My birthday is on the 22nd of this month and I hope the gods don't shake their cold dandruff all over it like they did last year. That's one wish. The other wish is that this will be a better writing year for me.

Not writing much poetry has been my biggest source of unhappiness for the past few months. I've been working more on my novel and I'm constantly writing in my head. I'm constanly sketching and rounding out my characters, their intentions, their idiosyncracies. I enjoy this type of writing, but poetry is my first love and there's nothing like your first love, really. Sometimes, poetic lines float across my blue skies and I grab them but don't know what to do with them. When did it stop being so simple?

And I know this is all right. I have this conversation with myself and with others all of the time. Intellectually, I know it's all right to not be constantly writing. To marinate and absorb. I've been getting ample teaching jobs. But, I'm sorry to say that teaching poetry brings me absolutely no inspiration. You would think so, but it doesn't. I love teaching, the self contained joy it brings. But it doesn't enhance my writing. Never has. Rita told me this would happen.
The teaching, the children in East Harlem, the freelance work. Social life. I come home exhausted. I've been saying that life gets in the way of my writing. I've heard other writers/artists say the same thing. I think that's a detrimental dichotomy to establish, the idea that art and life exist independent of each other, that they can't exist in the same space. They are kissing cousins. I know this. But, there's the brain inside the head and the brain inside the heart. This creative quagmire has been hard for me emotionally.

I miss poetry. I can count the number of poems I've written in 2005 on my two hands--the ones I'm happy, on one. When I go through those periods when I'm writing heavily, after writing till 3 or 4 am, I wake up in the mornings like a woman in love. The poem is the first thing on my mind, the first face I want to see. I want to improve it and I want it to improve me. I carry it with me in my purse. Caress it on the train. Sneak in a few kisses at work. I miss that special sort of narcissism. That strange way of looking in the mirror.

I write now and I'm highly critical. Nothing is good enough. I'll spend a night working on a poem and wake up the next morning only to find that it has bad breath, a missing tooth.
A few nights ago, I recited a poem in my dream. I was on a stage and the poem was dark and it was beautiful and it was mine. It has never been written. I was so free in this dream. So free of self-consciousness. The images had the uninhibition of some of my older work. In my dream, I felt both the rush of writing and the rush of performing. The joy was combined. I've never experienced this feeling before. I woke up from the dream and I couldn't retrieve the poem. But I smiled. Because I knew that the poet still lives.