Spring semester has started.
We’re all immersed in the ritual of change
and totally committed to that descent into madness
to the relentless drabness, the flatness, the blandness
for the hours, days and weeks of study
and a bone-deep fatigue that’s actually funny

We’ll live at the edge of intensity
near the the corner of drudging
and gather around the printer
at the media center
like a secular rite of passage

I think I need a daily grind—to keep my mind busy.
What’s wrong with me, that when I’m on vacation, I miss it?
What if work/study is one of my bone-marrow-deep love languages?
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Songs for this:
Happy Dreamer by Laid Back
Easier Said Than Done by Thee Sacred Souls
(You're Better) Than Ever by illuminati hotties

Poems don’t have to rhyme, free verse it isn’t a crime
I can write what I please—don’t call the police.
Must I play the game, both rhyme and spill intimate things?
Can I develop leitmotifs without rhyming riffs?
I could claim I’m writing prose - yeah, be one of those.
No one can rhyme all the time.
I can refuse—I’m no Dr F-ing Seuss,
**** it! ← See? THAT didn’t rhyme.
(sirens in the distance)
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Fun songs for this:
Ain't It Fun by Paramore
It's All Your Fault (with Katie Shore) by Asleep At The Wheel

If freshman year was aspirational
and sophomore year was unhinged
junior year was put up or shut up
and senior year is a dash to the finish line

This year’s on fast forward—and it’s for keeps
every to-do list has value-laden questions
things seem sharp edged, single use and intense
it’s all about trajectories and ‘landing spots”

Let’s wax poetic..

Produce now, or spend fury on thyself—all else is untenable
we’re past youth and ignorance—your honour’s at stake

Suitors call you by name, like well-acquainted friends
they took your measure—you’re beyond the mark of others
they ****** with money—the future brings liberty and noble deeds.

So don the the garland and prove thyself—take the field
join the battle—now’s the reward—aidless, perpetual toil
with every motion be right, it’s thy shunless destiny.
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A song for this:
A Man of Great Promise by The Style Council
Headstart For Happiness by The Style Council

Yay! Some cold at last, and even a dusting of snow.
We moved back into the dorm—braving knife-like breezes—yesterday.
It was bracing and heroic - do I want it to warm up?
That’s a hard no.

let’s wax poetic..

Think not of winter as bleak
wrap your steely bones warmly, wear a cap
—for gelid wintertide can bind us together.

Midwinter is the time o' the year to be warm hearted,
to find a companion, a creature fair, a lass (or a manly man)
and suggest a more temperate snuggle— it can do no harm to try.

Think not of winter as bleak
make sweet use of flattery, and face cold’s embrace
likewise, cheek to cheek, with a warming and open heart.
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Snowbird by Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem
We'll Sing In the Sunshine by Thornbirds

Have you ever pretended a guy was interesting?
Have you slow danced and let him sniff you up close?
I gives you somewhere to go, if you decide to.

Or given a little kiss—nothing slutty in that.
You know, a 'person' isn’t a good kisser - it takes two.
I’m not talking about me, of course.

There’s a two-way interrogation going on
complete with our own internal narratives
—we reenact it’s rituals in the strangest places

like quiet libraries or the lerch and spin of a dance club
we process by analogy and approximation and it works
until it doesn’t, like cold water poured into a glass.

Then we settle back into the dull rhythms of study
I’m not talking about me, of course.
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Songs for this:
This Girl's In Love (Live At HMH) by Trijntje Oosterhuis
The Men of Your Dreams by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince

The sky is a cloudless crystal blue
with a breeze to chap your lips
I’m grateful for it, it’s heaven-sent
the dawn was a celestially stamped, angry red
sailors take warning

It’s going to get feisty cold,
I’m told
about the time we go back to school.
A polar-bear vortex with all its features
will spread its icy paws

What jumps out at me first
is how it could be worse.
if unapologetic nature
pounced sans disclaimers
with a cold worth semi-Shakespearean verse

What follows, star-crossed
is a week storm-tossed
a winter holocaust
with heaven-kissed frost
that only madness would call a judgement

We’re steered from harm
by precision alarms
stay warm
sweet friends
wrap up, stay in
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Songs for this:
Come In from the Cold by Marc Broussard
World's A Changing by The Bingtones

(a holiday vignette)

I’m taking a chunk of my holi-days to work on my thesis (So is Lisa). Without classes we can fully devote our minds to them.
My senior thesis hangs over me, I can’t ignore it.

I banged my funny bone - what even IS a funny bone? My entire arm is tingly and numb.
This song is playing → ’Talk talk featuring troye sivan by Charli xcx & Troye Sivan” I’m feeling so happy—it’s electric—peridot—it’s good.

I’ve got a buffalo. (a buffalo is a cool, high or positive event)
It’s really not that much of a story.
Lisa and I were walking down 5th avenue and there was like, this old man, who was standing out by the curb with a camera—in kind of an adorable way—looking for things to take pictures of—so I smiled as we walked by. Not Lisa though, she’s from Manhattan. Manhattan girls don’t smile on the street.

Then he was like, “Stop, STOP! Stop right there!” I stopped, Lisa walked on a step or two.
“I take street photos, and I want YOU TWO to model in them.”
I was like, “OH, oh NOOO, I don’t know about that.” I looked to Lisa, who looked aghast.
“I use the pictures for street fashion layouts - have you seen New York Magazine’s ‘Street Style?’
“What are you stopping for?” Lisa whispered to me exasperatedly.” She has a horror of modeling.
“He’s kind of adorable, don’t you think?” I asked in a ‘come on,’ pleading voice.
“Most of the time they don’t even use the faces—and I can give you one if you’d like,” he said.
He handed me a New York Magazine business card, he’s on Insta, so he wasn’t some crazy homeless guy.
“Ok, I said,” after a moment, shruggingly. He smiled and backed off several feet, getting ready.
"Anais!" Lisa said, shocked at my ‘out of towner’ naiveite, “I’m not,” she shorthanded, stepping away.

So, for a couple of minutes he took a potpourri of pix, posing me with comments like “turn sideways, pout, pop your waist,” and “look bored.” Now it was cool and windy, I was wearing a hoodie and jeans, and he was never creepy or anything, but I thought, ‘how do you pop your hip in a hoodie?’

As we walked away, Lisa said, “Why’d you agree to do that?”
“Charles is here,” I said defensively, “he had a card and book,” I shrugged. If anything, Charles was amused.
He gave me a couple of pics - cringy and un-model-ly. I think he really wanted Lisa (duh). Anyway, that was my New Year’s Day buffalo. I felt glamorous—for a minute.
Then we went for apple-brandy slushies—which were pretty buffalo too.
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Songs for this:
Glamour Girl by Louie Austen
Street Life by Randy Crawford
Talk talk featuring troye sivan by Charli xcx & Troye Sivan