U is for... unexcused absences.

Yep, that's me at a reading I did on Saturday night.  

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for reading my blog these past few years.  I know I'm supposed to be in the middle of this A-Z challenge and I keep missing my deadline.  I know!

My excuses are not due to any bad events.  Sure life gets in the way of blogging, but that's not why I'm missing weeks.  Right now, I'm doing poetry readings and writing workshops all over the place and I am having so much fun!

I'm so very thankful for all of you for helping and encouraging me on the poetry writing path.  I want to tell you about that stuff.  I want to write about how "readings" are performances and they take so much out of me.  How when I sit down to write, I don't want to write to a set prompt. I just want to write whatever comes out and post whenever I want.  I want to tell you about the work I'm doing at my son's school library.  I want to tell you about the dream come true featured reading that I did in Orange a few weeks ago.  I want to tell you how one of my poems is getting published in a local quarterly, being printed right now!  How I think it's crazy, how I'm feeling crazy.

I started this blog to write about my adjustment to motherhood.  I didn't make it public until I hid all the motherhood posts and started playing along with the fantastic prompts you all share.  I love this awesome community of bloggers.

I'm sorry I've been unreliable, absent, and out of the loop for so long.  I also hate that I feel so much guilt when another Monday rolls around and I'm not prepared to post anything.

Worst of all, I think this week was the week we were supposed to work with V.
I guess I just set myself up for W:  whoopsies!

Please continue visiting my favorite blogger, Just Me, every week for the MFM.  She's far more reliable  than me and her writing kicks ass.


- J

Q and R are for...Metal Health?

Get it?   This video used to terrify me.  Because of the opening scene, I was terrified of the boys in elementary school sporting Quiet Riot T-shirts underneath their Iron Maiden hoodies.

I spent way too much time watching Mtv as a kid.  My friends quote lines from TV shows like Brady Bunch and The Cosby Show where I can describe the video to most songs that were released in the mid-eighties to mid-nineties, with lapses in memory that are telling because they occur when we didn't have cable.

Now that you've banged your head a bit, or not, go check out what my awesome friend and amazingly talented writer, Just Me shared.  Go read all of her stuff, it's fantastic, literary and a helluva lot more attractive than what I'm throwing up here.

OK, so it's not MFM, but it'll have to do.  The Manor has been hit by the flu.  Although I'm finally feeling like I'm recovering, my son is now feverish and needing some extra mom time.


Take care of yourselves and I'll hopefully be back to better next week when Just Me are scheduled to hit S.

Without Conviction

Last night I was supposed to go to a poetry workshop led by an awesome poet and nice guy, but I didn't end up going because a friend who is going through some pretty shitty times called and asked if we'd join her for dinner.  I chose dinner.  What turned into a delayed arrival to workshop ended up being no arrival.  (Sorry!)

For the record, I did do the assignment but had no intention of bringing it to class.  I just didn't feel that what I wrote for the workshop was appropriate, so I'm posting it here.

The assignment was to write a letter poem as in a "Dear you, this is a poem, sincerely me" or perhaps closer to Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat (swoon!) and many other genius takes on the letter poem (Eric Morago and Brendan Constantine's poetry comes to mind when I think of genius letter poems).  

What came out of me is... I don't know if it's a poem.  It's prose and yet grammatically not...?  See, I still struggle with what defines poetry and what defines prose and what defines freewrite, personal essay, creative nonfiction and fiction, spoken word and words silently said read and everything else in between.

Yeah so here it is.  Please comment so I know you're reading this.  Rumor has it I have more readers than I was aware of and I suddenly feel compelled to give you your money's worth.  
As always, thank you for reading.



Without Conviction

The tables were empty when I entered the aluminum scented room.  
A short guard in aviator sunglasses scowled,
stereotype of a stereotype annoyed by my appearance 
asked who I’d come for, grabbed my ID while blurting commands 
at the inmate standing on a chair, adjusting the TV’s angle, 
“To the left, no back. No! Up a bit. Dammit, not that much.”

The cold brick walls, lit with vending machines, echoed the soundtrack from Casino Royale, reflected images smeared color on the scuffed tile floor
The sound of my chuckle at the irony of watching James Bond in prison was more unsettling than the sound of ice falling somewhere in the depths of the bright red coke machine.

I thought you’d never arrive 
I worried you wouldn’t recognize me or worse
Was it possible I’d not recognize you?

Having never been to prison before, I envisioned TV jail
with plexiglass partitions, visitors speaking with convicts 
through black handsets wired to the cubicle wall, 
and melodramatic background music, signaling new understandings.

Yours was an anticlimactic entrance through a door eight feet away from the table I sat
The guard padded you down, handed you a blue jump suit
Despite your position, you looked like a wide-shouldered mobster of massive height ready to throw down.
You looked exactly the same as you did when I was child, just older. 
So much older.

“It’s you,” you said.  “I can’t believe it’s you.”
I let you squeeze my hand, hoping I’d find my own words. 
Failing, I wondered why government institutions all use the same beige tile flecked with brown, 
I wondered why the blue of the jumpsuit made everything else seem grey
I wondered why I had come.
Three years later, I look back and still wonder why I’d gone.

Once again, your letters arrive regularly; your release date approaches. 
You ask why I’m not writing, is everything OK?
I want to be honest, I want you to know what I’m feeling
but instead brag about my son,
the grandchild you’ve never and may never meet,
comfortable knowing you never acknowledge content between the lines.

When we sat beside each other, you said I was your first visitor, ever.
You said, you were done playing convict, tired of touring various correctional facilities.
You said you’d call me when you got out,
You got out, then vanished.

Now you write the same lines
acknowledging your less than impressive record, 
but this time claiming to have found religion. 
I pretend to believe you, or that I want the same
but I don’t know what I believe or want or need anymore.
Although you’re not that far away this time, I won’t visit
nor will I suggest you finally meet my son.
I tell myself that it’s better when the only father I know 
is the one who writes me letters from prison.

---

P.S. Brian Miller, thank you for reminding me to write my way.  It is much easier letting out these words and feelings without worrying about form.

P is for... Powers Unproven and another Post Delayed

Yesterday, while climbing into the car after school, Charlie said, “I have surprises for you in my backpack but you can’t see them until we get home.”

Once home, he opened his bag and presented me with a handmade card and two magical weapons crafted from Popsicle sticks and scotch tape.  Inside the card, he'd crayon scrawled my new super-secret hero name.

Touched and ready to prove myself worthy of playing his sidekick, I put on my mask and cape, took my new weapons, and followed Charlie outside where we saved some days.


This morning, while I was showering, Charlie went out hero-ing without me. When it was time to go to school, he returned with triumphantly flushed cheeks. I felt confident that justice and peace were restored and secured for the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, hero-ing is never done.  After returning home from school drop-off, I discovered the remains of one of the hand-forged gifts from my hero; my mighty boomerang had been shredded by some ferocious creature.

From what I could deduce, our beloved dog-gone-rogue, obviously envious of our dynamic duo, shredded my super-powered razor-edged boomerang.

That's not all! Now he's trying to suffocate me with some toxic gas that fills the room while I'm trying to work. (Digesting boomerangs apparently gives dogs noxious gas power.)

Although I still possess my +5 dagger, it proves useless against this invisible toxin. I worry this is one battle I cannot win.

To be continued..?

- - -

This week’s MFM was brought to you by the letter P.  Stop by Just Me’s blog and see the fantastic story she posted.  And come back next week to see if I can make the deadline for the prompt, “Q is for...”

...Ok, so I am late posting this MFM, but honestly, I had considered not posting at all and deleting my blog.  I’ve felt incredibly uninspired and discouraged about writing these past few months or maybe for the past year.  

When I started doing the poetry thing, I was surprised that so many people dug it.  I was even more surprised when the teacher offered to write a letter of recommendation for me to get into an MFA program.  And despite his offer to help and all the wonderful attention I’ve received lately, I didn’t complete the application (today was the deadline).  

As in previous years, I found the idea of writing a statement of purpose daunting.  I don’t know what my purpose is anymore.  Seven years ago it was to write and get my MFA or PhD so that I could write and get paid to teach.  Now?  Now I feel like I fucked that whole life up, but I can’t regret it because I have this awesome kid.  

Still, I write in old notebooks, I go to poetry readings, writing groups and workshops.  

I’ve got a poem, first seen here, slated to be published in a local quarterly later this month.  Later this month, I’m also scheduled to be part of a feature at a venue that I always considered my dream place to feature, like participating in a reading there would be evidence that I am everything I said I was, but?  

But?  I feel, hollow and superficial, like this is the start of a farce, a play on the experience I’d hoped for.  Or maybe it’s too little too late?  Maybe I’m just too distracted to get that rush from writing something that matters and too scattered to actually write something that matters to me.  Or?

Hell, I don’t know.

M, N, O is for... Oh, yeah.

M is for Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays.
N is for New Year.  May you 2013 be happy, healthy and grand.
O is for Oh, yeah, we're still supposed to be doing MFM every week.  Sorry, Just Me and I took an unannounced holiday but plan on being back on schedule next week with the letter P.


Check out my friend and more reliable partner in this venture we call MFM.  Just Me's blog rocks!