I think I may start writing again

I haven't written a poem in approximately five months. I go through cycles, I write in bursts like fireworks that die off and fade away to that silence that lingers until the next crack of gunpowder.

This isn't to say I'm brilliant or anything. Last semester I took a poetry class with Bruce Smith, who is a genius and writes beautiful poetry. I have two of his books in my bag, Mercy Seat and The Other Lover, alongside Stone Butch Blues and my own rag-tag poetry journal. I am bringing my journal to Massachusetts. I no longer write diaries, I diary in poetry.

Last semester in my poetry class I became certain that I was the worst poet in existence. I don't know if this is true. I think I have my moments, but then at other times my writing falls flat. I had a graveyard poetry phase. I am so morbid. I wrote a few pathetically sappy poems early last semester. Then they got bitter and angry. I don't know where they went after that.

In high school I wrote a sixty page story about a girl with schizophrenia. My mom worried that I had problems. In my senior year I wrote a short story about a house I visit in my nightmares. That was the assignment. Other people had the stereotypical creaking doors, noises in the hall, boogie men. I had walls that ran with blood. I had paintings whose eyes followed movement in the hallway. I had broken glass and suicide memories, I had cobwebs on silver, I had a ghost covered in tattered memories of clothes, I had little creatures who crept beneath the furniture. I had this actualization of a place that I once knew while I slept.

My teacher, Mrs. Root, wanted to send me to guidance counselling with the guidance counsellor who I just learned is a lesbian. My brother tells me I have no gaydar. This can be detrimental to my lifestyle, I think. Eric told me that now that he's with Johnny he might as well not be gay. I told him he's Johnnysexual. He would have put that in his profile if his parents didn't check it. I don't know what sexuality I am. Right now I don't know how much that matters. I'm like Eric. I have eyes for one only. We shall see where this leads.

I read my nightmare story to the class. One of my classmates threatened to beat me up if I didn't pursue writing. I do hope my major in English and Textual Studies is good enough for him. I've had friends threaten me harm if I didn't pursue art. To you folks, I am sorry. Know that I tried. I just can't stand sitting still for five hours, even if the people are generally naked. It's not a good payoff. And some of the models are scary in the nude. I do still draw when the inspiration strikes. My sketchpad is going with me to Massachusetts.

My writing goes through phases. My work sucked when I was a freshman and a sophomore in high school. This has something to do with my being naive at the time and not knowing myself. As a junior chemistry class bored me and so I took to writing poetry during chemistry. I think I did some of my best work when I should have been learning the periodic table. "Chemists do it on a table... periodically." I didn't write again until October of my senior year. Perhaps March. October and March are my best months. They are more romantic. March is romantic and October is eerie and my work follows suit. May is hopeful. June is content. July is lazy. August is just too damn hot for poetry. I think we should veto September completely. November is frost covered and delicate. December is sad about the past. January is not meant for poetry, nor New Years Resolutions. February is the month where I attack love and Valentine's day and romance. March again. March is my month for romance. I don't like April much. This year I think I like May a good deal. I may need to shift my romantic poetry to May.

I am forbidden to overuse the moon in my poetry. It's cliche. So are flowers yawning at the sky. I suck at poetry. I am cliche but my messages are not. Maybe the flowers aren't necessary to the message. Maybe I shouldn't try for flowers. I can't have broken mirrors in my poetry, but I can have them in the hallway at my old dorm. They don't reflect anything anyway. I can't have vastness because it's too broad, but when I come in close people can see through the words and into me. "I have shown in it the secret of my own soul." Ah, Basil Hallward, I feel your pain though I do not paint Dorian. I have no Dorian. That would be too presumptuous.

Oscar, you say create beautiful things but put nothing of yourself into it. I tell you that is not possible. Perhaps, I suppose, possible, but what is the worth of beauty without identity? What is the value of something beautiful and meaningless? You are ironic because you put so much of yourself into your stories and then warn not to put yourself in beautiful things. You live in your beautiful things, and they reproach you. Perhaps I need to put myself into beautiful things. Create again.

Why did I start this post? To say that I haven't written in five months and suddenly I feel inspiration gnawing at me and creeping closer. I wonder how best to describe it. Does it gnaw or creep or whisper? This has been an obscenely long post written for no reason in an incredibly presumptuous style. I presume people care, I presume I have talent, I presume that someone has ears.

I shall dub this the summer the summer for prose. I generally write non-rhyming lyric poetry. Or else I write pathetically horrid sonnets. I did a villanelle once. I hate structure. Prose, I think, would be a nice change of pace.

So, to conclude this epic post, I am back on campus for the day. I am updating my blog from the library. I am going to go watch a DocuDrag Production about Leslie Feinberg. I am going to pay my bookstore bill. I am going to take out gay books and try to buy S/he. I am going to fall asleep in the grass in front of the Hall of Languages and pretend I am laying beside a Wolf who is as nervous as I am. I am going to try and avoid helping Joan pack because I don't want to be helpful or work in the heat, but I do have to go say goodbye and take back my highheels. I am going to register for the class I didn't have time to register for earlier. I am going to change my mealplan from 14 meals and $120 bucks at kimmel to 5 meals and $580 bucks at kimmel. Fuck the dining halls. I may go lounge at Panesci.

Oh, right. I also need to go to a dining hall and eat something. Tina. Get the FOOD.