(a silly series of Senryus)

It’s time to cram for
final exams, again, so
here we go, mug up.

My mind, coffee dark,
drifts in academic dreams,
—think roiling oceans.

A ‘mandatory’
society meeting? You’re
not the boss of me.

I’ll shun or eschew,
if I want too, sidestepping,
like a tap dancer.

I'm not lazy - I'm
high tech and in energy
saving mode now.

It’s a pointed and
conscious decision—I’ll do
me and you do you.
.
.
Songs for this:
Simply Couldn't Care by Tracey Thorn
Each and Every One by Everything But the Girl
.
Oh, and a Christmas playlist because—it’s December!:
https://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_14.mp3

(a piece from high school (I’ve been reorganizing))

I am simply at my worst these days.
Wild and unpredictable emotions rush on me - it's a place where the layer of control and composure are very thin.

This school year has been an endless working, always desperate, collection of days.

Each passing week seemed to unmask some flaw in me.. Like peeling a rotten onion.

Emotionally, spiritually, I’m drubbed—I droop like a hanged man.

It's not the work—I survive (piano) competitions and academic battles as if by some brand of magic..

No, it's more.
I have lost my goal. Like biblical engineers raising the tower of Babel on the plain of Sennaar, I am struck by a lack of focus. My direction, my original plans, seem shallow—I stand purposefully gelded.

It's worse because I'm somehow so much less who I want to be.

Like an asymptotic curve I constantly miss my ideal. I am hunted, internally, by my own inner voice, that ruthless, pittyless, seeker of perfection.. it lurks like the prowling wolf, stalk bent walk.. sifting my every thought, my every action for flaws.. until like the wing weary hunted pray I could almost welcome the killers warmth for sweet silence

In a mood somewhere between cowardly and courageous I finally approached my mom..

In a speech from the scaffold, I told her of my black, tight, treacherous spiral.. of my doubts about everything.

I expected the worst.. a disappointment, in less than cryptic, ciphered messages, a slow sharpening of her claws on me for endless shortcomings..

Instead, I got miracles..
as if rigid constellations had shifted.. an atmosphere of freedom earned.. and at least for that moment, the mom who used to sing me awake in the mornings as a girl.. and a delicious summer of rest.
.
.
A song for this:
Everyday Is A Winding Road by Sheryl Crow
Cruel To Be Kind by Letters to Cleo
.
Oh, and a Christmas playlist because—it’s December!:
https://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_02.mp3

that girl with blue eyes
ice-cold rays of rising flames
how gentle they seemed

those darkened clouds cried
and im a fool
for thinking the tears were real

the most hurt
comes from the people that don't understand you

and most problems
come from the people that do

ME MAM’S MIND
(in memory of my mother Ita)

“If you fall
off that wall

& break both
your legs

...don’t come
running to me! ”

Could never understand
my Mam’s mind

& how it
worked.

One moment
she 'had half a mind

to come up there
&' get me off that wall.

Then she 'was in two minds
about' whether to tell me to stop.

“Go ahead...go ahead
& **** yourself

...see if I care! ”

“I’m warning you child
if you fall off that wall

& ****
yourself

I’ll personally
come up there

& **** ya myself
so I will! ”

I used to watch the words
climbing out of her mouth

& fly around the room

looking for a place to land
in my mind.

Never cared
whether she gave out.

I just loved
everything she said

the music of her
& how

she made the words
behave.

I came down
and kissed her

kissed her worry away.

'I'm sorry Mam'
I told her.

And she cried.

*

It was the moment I grew up...seeing her not just as me Mam but as another human being with her own fear and worries...she became a person in her own right. I was so disgusted with myself for causing that fear and after that I tried to look after her as much as I could. seeing the world not just with my eyes but with her eyes. I became in a way her mother. Me mothering my mother.

Life at 21, do you remember it?
Things rush at you, hit you, from all directions.
Any small decision can turn into a major plot beat.

What are our lives anyway but the sum of our decisions?
Opportunities contract and expand around us, like breathing—
and what fills those lungs are our test scores and faculty opinion.

College is a land of dreams—we’re all dream catchers—on our own paths, but the paths are mazes shrouded in haze, tumblers in need of combinations, variants that we must learn and memorize though it drains our communal blood.

At test times, the silence in libraries and coffeehouses is deafening,
full, as they are, of hunched-back phantoms toiling on books or blue-lit screens. If it sounds stressful and dramatic—it is. It’s not a time to get raddled—it’s all a big test.

Your world contracts to the sterile and dry— the facts and the moments needed to gather and order them.

That’s why we love breaks. Fall, Summer, Christmas, Thanksgiving—any flavor—break.

In fact, Lisa and I are on break now, I’m typing, on a MacBook Air, in a helicopter, screaming towards Manhattan.

If we don’t die in this shaky, 250mph, 3000-feet out-over Long Island Sound, cricket-like contraption, we’re going to have a great time—if we do nothing but sleep, hug our families and eat turkey—a great time.
.
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Songs for this:
Little Hercules by Trisha Yearwood
Constant Craving by k.d. lang