February 01 wearing Tuesday 02 to Brigit 03 flakes and fruit salad 04 be very very careful 05 a world that is "lila" 06 unfinished 07 still unfinished 08 the long-distance poet 09 my fake book 10 graphic gossip 11 backlash 12 aftermath 13 14 a fit of hyphens, etc. 15 a desolation of numbers 16 missing, mistakes 17 a vulnerability of poems 18 some night singing 21 a conceptual grasp of chaos 23 status/ static 24 multiple ceilings 25 multiple floors 27 don't slip, you'll drown 28 inflamity 29 the limits of action

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February 1 wearing tuesday
I dreamed about a madman outside my back door. He had red hair and freckles and talked strangely. There were a lot of baseball bats in the back yard. The madman picked up the yellow Wiffle bat. He didn't seem too threatening so I said in a parental voice, "Now give me the bat." I took the bat slowly. He picked up another bat, one of the metal ones. I took that one away. A few more bats and he was starting to get a little excitable. I wasn't afraid in the dream, but I was unsure of myself. When he finally tried to lunge through the back door into the house, I grabbed him from behind by the collar and pulled him out. A night ago I dreamed about my older son. His black pupils filled his eyes. Now that was a scary dream. I'm not inspired tonight. I feel worn out. I wish I could do more. I'm getting sucked back into the working world. Oddly enough, I want to have a party. Every few years, I get this crazy urge. The last one was a year ago June, my son's high school graduation. Maybe I'll have G over and we'll discuss the point of Sunday School, if there is one. I'd like to have a pie festival. I'm craving some compatible conversations. The madman dream felt the same as teaching those wild kids last Sunday. The black pupils dream felt like the X Files last Sunday. I need better inputs.

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February 2 to Brigit
Imbolc. Candlemas. How could I forget? The color of the season is RED, like tomato soup. "The ceremonial color for the spring quarter of the year, which begins at Imbolc, is RED." Soon I will get to add some lace to it. Travel. Protection. The symbols are of protection: Elhaz, the elk rune, St. Bridhe's cross, the traditional sigil of Imbolc, St. Blaise's crossed candles pressed against the throat, the protective knot. Cormac's Glossary called her "Brigit, the female sage .... Brigit the goddess, whom poets adored, because her protecting care over them was very great and very famous." Barbara Walker, Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets Protection -- how do I know it? What protects me? Isolation. Ignorance. Inertia. I imagine myself always clawing through thick layers of suffocating protection. Better come home. Better safe than sorry. Better not to rock the boat. Better leave well enough alone. You know -- "You're playing with fire." I will invoke my own protection. I do need it. I've felt grimy and shitty and pointless for too many days. I need protection from overprotection. Protection from overwork. Protection from overwhelm. Protection from rejection of my own core engines. Protection from turning my own eyes into the eyes of someone else. Protection from numb, dumb, and glum. Dammit, this is hard. Imbolc is the fire festival. I want red oven mitts, trimmed with lace, to wear while I play with this fire.

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February 3 flakes and fruit salad
Today at work -- my dream is coming true and I'm actually using a lot of html on the job. I feel very comfortable with it. I'm also closing TRs (trouble reports) and using PVCS (version control) just like a real programmer. Cool. Also -- I joined in the Foosball tournament. Kind of a goofy thing to do, but I had fun. I scored a big goal right away -- on my opponent's side of the table. More snow. God, I'm a flake. I'm going to do mandalas on Sunday. I'll talk about Brahman and meditation and the still center. Then I'll have the kids cut out paper snowflakes and draw mandalas. Sounds like fun. A kinder and gentler lesson than Durga and the buffalo demon. I made a very large fruit salad tonight for the church potluck tomorrow. I hope it doesn't turn too brown. Kiwi, green grapes, red grapefruit, apples, bananas. They each open in a different way. I squeezed lemon juice on the pieces and covered them closely with plastic wrap. If it does turn brown, it can't be any worse than the brown cole slaw I took to a potluck once. I found out too late that I only had balsamic vinegar, and I thought How bad could it be? It tasted fine but it looked rotten. I sound normal but I feel rotten. PS Today's mental refrain: "What kind of a person are you?"

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February 4 be very very careful
The ground is populated with little sucking black holes, voids of knowledge, invoids, robovoids, voids of inspiration in an emotional wasteland of bad carpeting. Luckily there are workarounds. I move toward what's exploding, going out, whatever has momentum, whatever particles have charm. A void exploded today; this was very misleading. Now it's a big splashy void. A rotten tomato void. There's blood on my shirt. I wended my way onto two new work-related mailing lists and they're spewing red into my in-box. Voids disguised as explosions. And what about all the reluctant poets and all the reluctant painters and all the reluctant bankers and all the reluctant assemblage artists and all the reluctant eaters and all the reluctant journalers and all the reluctant workers and all the half-hearted and all the regretful and all the opiated and all the satiated and all the obsessed and all the poorly timed and all the unlucky and all the ungrateful -- why are we all sighing. I want to pat myself on the head, but if I did, my hand would be sucked into a dark skull void and then I would disappear into myself. Either that or I would trigger some kind of headburst where bones and brain would spatter forth and leave stains on all the walls. Between the void and the explosion, what else but -- the horizontal. My refuge. Text. Time. The road. Lying down.

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February 5 "a world that is lila"
So beautiful, especially the last: In sum: to the question "What kind of world do we have?" Hinduism answers: 1. A multiple world that includes innumerable galaxies horizontally, innumerable tiers vertically, and innumerable cycles temporally. 2. A moral world in which the law of karma is inexorable. 3. A middling world that will never replace paradise as the spirit's destination. 4. A world that is maya, deceptively tricky in passing off its multiplicity, materiality, and dualities as ultimate when they are actually provisional. 5. A gymnasium for developing spiritual capacities -- what Keats called "a vale for soul-making." 6. A world that is lila, the play of the divine in its cosmic dance -- untiring, unending, resistless, yet ultimately beneficent with a grace born of infinite vitality. from The Illustrated World Religions, A Guide to Our Wisdom Traditions by Huston Smith

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February 6 unfinished
A small sublimity. Where to start? Here, beats the heart, raggedy, worn, relentless, still. Hear red tulips murmur (now), under the snow, constant and unconsumed, stalling, aglow,

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February 7 still unfinished
Oh, yuck, I got stuck in a tight tense little form and I couldn't get out of it no matter how hard I tried. The first stanza slid right out of my head with a deceptive innocence and charm and then the second stanza started behaving very badly, like a two-year-old, and then the third stanza made itself totally impossible. I just hate it when a poem flops into obvious rhyming sing-song, when it sticks out its tongue at me and waggles fingers in its ears, and refuses to eat anything good for it, and just throws tantrums for candy. Uck, I hate this poem more than anything. And I had such good intentions. Now it's making me nauseous. Usually at this point I give up. No, I usually give up before this point. But what if I don't? What if I just keep trying to write this one? Bleah, yuck, no fun, flinging my arms about ... The only mildly interesting thing about this poem is that it is "unfinished" in three dimensions: form, content, and reality. Or is that just me coming up with a very tricky sly excuze not to work on it anymore? warned - warm - worn - wrong skies - ice - eyes - cry gray - lace - face - sparse - grace A small sublimity. Where to start? Here, beats the heart, ragged and worn, but relentless, still. When? tulips murmur (now), under the snow, constant and unconsumed embers, slow How?

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February 8 the long distance poet
Hmmm. I don't know. All I can say is I worked on it for three straight days. ~~~~~~~~~~~ A small sublimity. Where to start? Here, beats the heart, ragged and worn, relentless still When? tulips murmur (now), under the snow, constant and unconsumed, embers, slow How? pierce these drifts of gray ice lace, on my knees, breathe earth warm, aaah, awake

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February 9 my fake book
I found this book this past weekend at a book sale. 25 cents. I read this book very fast one year, I don't remember when, long ago. I was very touched by it. Now that I look back at the book, I find many of my ideas are expressed in there. Did my empty ideas come from this book? It's a sad, desperate, wonderful book. I don't find any comfort in it but it's something to hold. From Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey, his fake book: It's all right. Wittman was working out what this means: After two thousand days of quest, which takes a hundred chapters to tell, and twenty four acts, seven days to perform, Monkey and his friends, Tripitaka on the white horse, Piggy, and Mr. Sandman, arrive in the West. The Indians give them scrolls, which they load on the white horse. Partway home, Monkey, a suspicious fellow, unrolls the scrolls, and finds that they are blank scrolls. "What's this? We've been cheated. Those pig-catchers gave us nothing. Let's demand an exchange." So, he and his companions go back, and they get words, including the Heart Sutra. But the empty scrolls had been the right ones all along. A Sunday of vows. The way to make a life: Say Yes more often than No. Participate. Shoulder one of the vows that are always flying about like hovering angels. Every angel is terrible. Still, though, alas? I invoke you, almost deadly birds of the soul, knowing what you are. Swear, and follow through. No need to invent new vows; we haven't done the old ones, and they aren't done with us. Vows remain after those who gave them are gone. Think them in kanji and in English, so no matter if a part of your brain aphasicly goes out, some word remains. A posse of angels have rounded up some strays. To keep the old promises that are not broken, though the people break. To be a brother, a friend, a husband to some stranger passing through. In all scrupulosity, he can't go home with Tana. She dropped him off. He spent the rest of the night looking for the plot of our ever-branching lives. A job can't be the plot of life, and not a soapy love-marriage-divorce -- and hell no, not Viet Nam. To entertain and educate the solitaries that make up a community, the play will be a combination revue-lecture. You're invited.

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February 10 graphic gossip
I was nervous. I thought it's the wrong day, the wrong time, the wrong place. I was frantic getting my son Chicken McNuggets, standing in the slowest line, of course, with the trainee clerk, and the two people in front of me ordering for a large crowd, and the machine was out of chocolate shakes ... I ordered a large Sprite because I was dehydrated. I got to the campus right on the dot of 6:30. The place was packed. I had to park way in the back of the lot. I was giving my son nervous instructions about where he was to go and not go and do and not do. First he was to come with me so we could make sure he knew where the class was and could later find me. Whew, right room, right instructor -- and not too late, they're going over the previous project. I sit in the back and try to pay attention. He dismisses the class for a five minute break. We talk extremely fast about the assignment, the project, my ideas. I'm tongue-tied. He wants the presentation to be a "dialogue." I ask if I can be vague since I'm the client, and he says yes, or I can be extremely specific (yeah right). We mention the one slam poet we know in common. We share a laugh about this guy having a bad reputation on the slam scene. It was hard to miss the boos and hissing at the finals in Middletown; even as an outsider I knew all about it. The guy's too professional, too slick, and he makes money selling his tapes. Umm. The teacher begins the presentation. I'm introduced. I go up and talk nervously about the grant, the funding, the project, my (lack of) graphic design skills. I loosen up a little bit. There's a roomful of people hanging off my words. Some are pierced, some gray, one perfect extreme blonde, one very white and pudgy, all different accents. Maybe 25 of them? They start to ask very intelligent questions. What images do I like? What do I want on the cover? Do I want it to bleed? What's the margin on the cover? Are there any images that I don't like? (I say, nothing too crude, this will be distributed around in the mayor's office -- waving a red flag?) I show off all my journal samples and rag on what I don't like and get real vague, and talk about things like "emerging" and "chaos" and "avant garde" and "energy" and tell stories to illustrate my points and wave my arms. Does the poetry I'm getting have a theme? I say "no specific theme. I'm getting poems about love and poems about war." "Sounds like chaos to me," says the teacher. Do I like abstractions? I say something baffling off the top of my head like "yes, but they have to have meaning, not just pure abstraction." I show them a boxy abstract design on a cover and say "This does nothing for me." I seem to exhibit a problem with squares. The teacher tries to get them to think about the phoenix on one of last spring's covers. One woman argues that a phoenix does not look like a peacock. Damn literalist. "Well, yes, but it was a complex bird," he says. Unfortunately, I can't remember enough of the phoenix story to tell it. Do I want the price on the cover? I say "yes, but discreetly." The teacher writes discreetly on the board under the price. I jump over and cover the word discreetly with my hand and say, "but don't put the word discreetly on there." Ha, $5.00 discreetly. The pudgy guy asks if they can use a typographic treatment. I say yes, that's fine. But you could also avoid any words on the cover. I tell them my initial visualizations of the cover, like I'm sharing a deep confidence. They want to know my favorite colors. Orange, yellow, red, but I could also be Wowed by blue. This was the most fun I've had in a long time! And possibly the most attention I've ever had! Oh god, I'm worried about what they will come up with!

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February 11 backlash
There's no freedom anywhere around here. I'm looking and looking for it, but all I find is prisons, prisons of tasks and prisons of longing, prisons of cobwebs and prisons of websites. Decor: old snow and the decaying doorframes. Audio: talking irrelevancies or dead silence. Food: pizza every meal. Rationed water. No bedtime stories. No flares. No clothes, no hair, no nails. Everything is bitten. I mean bitter. The bed is full of sand and salt. I don't recognize any of my actions. I love Tony. I love Mark. I love John. I love the doctor even though his eyes are the shape of tiny crescents and he pats my shoulder twice awkwardly twice. The fog is thick and so are my goofs. Something yellow and orange is slithering around my legs. It wants to open like a lily but it can't. It's smothered with a bonnet and gloves. Do you want to know the truth? It's not caring and it's not careful. It's not smart and it's not smiling. It's not sex but it's related to fire. It becomes furiously pissy and cynical at poetry meetings and then it wants to bloom and cry. I'm far too discouraged to write. I'm going to go crawl into bed wearing all my clothes. Come get me when it's over.

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February 12 aftermath
Self-care makes for flabby, critical writing. But I still had to do it. Extremity can be so delicious. And so tempting. Why not always go there? Tears can be fun. I'm tired of myself. I want to write science fiction. I want that little yellow house. The doll house on the corner lot, with the weeping cherry tree out front and two entrances (exits). I finally broke down and started reading Michael Cunningham's The Hours. I'm not happy with it. I feel like he appropriated Virginia Woolf's life and work for his own, for no reason. I might not finish the book. I was thinking about the theory of fiction I learned from Pat Carr this summer. You are not to write about anything that hasn't happened to you. Corollary: you don't become a man if you're a woman and vice versa. Very strict. Fiction as one step away from the journal. People hated this theory. They want to do pyrotechnics like Michael Cunningham. They had already done whole novels, two or three of them, disobeying these rules. All false. Sigh. This led me to think about science fiction. I'm more willing to grant an "anything goes" protocol to science fiction. In fact, I'd like to call The Hours science fiction. (I find that funny.) But the rule in science fiction is that you have to create a completely coherent alternate world with a set of rules all its own. Too lazy. I'm back to the prose poem. Anything goes, and no internally consistent rules? or at least no complete coherency. But authentic non-logical relations. Uhhh .... I'm babbling. I told my friend about the foot-high livid plaster crucifix I have in the closet. She wanted me to dress it up in a robe. It would have to be a hooded robe with a heavy veil because the facial expression is just so hideous. There's no way I can display this object in the house. And I can't give it away. Or maybe I can. I've given all the other heirlooms back. Except for the jet beads and the dressers that watch me sternly ... babbling. Maybe I better shut up for now.

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February 13
Astonishing emptiness, you sparkle and creak in the darkness. You are the largest underground room, where Arha found herself, where rain trickled down among the rocks in the distance, the only way we could tell of your size, your grandeur, green streaks cascading down over our lenses' complete black vision of you, the scuttling echoes from your walls of small kicked stones. I lifted your black host of emptiness in my hands, in honor, my hands tense, fingers long and shaking, my actions the reverse of priests'. There you are, absence, there you are, soothing, black, and gone, there you are, more quiet than the thin dark mushrooms rising in a circle on the lawn in the night. Emptiness, emptiness, I call you and I draw you down, close. I stroke your lack of outline and I smell you with your faintest odor of cold and rain and the divine. I enfold you in my hands, look there between the crevasses created by my thumbs, I see you, your dark honor and your dignity. I have you, emptiness, I take you every night to the bedroom where you assist me, you snuff out the candles and croon no lullaby and blacken my eyes and take me silently to dreamless sleep.

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February 14 a fit of hyphens, etc.
It just won't work. And I can't explain why! I'm just telling you, it absolutely won't work. It's not right. I shared some writings from here with my journal collaborator. She liked them and wanted me to publish "at least three" of them in the poetry journal. I read through them again just now and -- what's wrong? They just won't work. They're mine. I want to hoard them. They're not crafted enough. They're not poetry-poetry, they're mostly venting with some word games thrown in. They came from a journal-journal. I mean a personal journal. They have nothing to do with anything else. They're not meant for anyone to Read (except for the millions of anonymous web surfers out there). They're weird. I don't want to be weird. I mean, I want to be weird, but not weird-weird. I want to be gifted-weird, not lame-assed-embarrassing-weird. How to tell the difference? They're immature. They're kiddy writing. They pretend to dabble with "adult themes" and the frightening and then they back off. They're experiments. They're supposed to be raw material, crude. They're supposed to sit in the closet in jars of formaldehyde. I have quite a lot of control over the content of the poetry journal. And I won't put my own stuff in. Or maybe I'll pick one and really overwork it into blandness and then put it in. I'm just HALF-baked. This friend, a not-a-poet collaborator, is the your-work-is-so-GREAT-you've-got-to-get-it-out-there one (accepts everything I do). The other poet-editor-collaborator is the wants-me-to-be-a-really-GOOD-poet one. (rejects everything I do). The third poet-publisher-collaborator is the writing-good-poetry-is-really-HARD one. (rejects everything I do). I'm exaggerating. It is clear I have some trouble with the critical eye. Maybe there's an answer. I'm wishing on a fallen asterisk -- I wish I had a very gentle but closely critical and open-with-suggestions poetry teacher. *

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February 15 a desolation of numbers
It's desolate around here. Insomnia last night -- a cup of Darjeeling at 9pm woke me up at 4am. The neighbor's car was idling at high speed; he does this every morning at this time. My mind was racing -- thoughts not of my paying job but of the poetry journal. Is that any better? I had to do a radio interview at 7 am about the poetry journal. Incredibly odd. The 2 radio personalities had such bright brittle voices. The whole interview (really a PSA more than an interview) was about 5 minutes long. It went by like lightning, and I failed to plug the 3 groups I really wanted to plug. I made 1 part of my goal. I got more than 100 poems. And that's not counting the guy that sent SO MANY POEMS it was impossible for me to count them. They were e-poems and the text just scrolled on and on and on. I finally decided this was abusive and I didn't have to take it so I noted his contribution as "Thousands of Poems" and decided I wouldn't bother with it any more. There are at least 6 people who said they would send something and haven't sent anything yet. Time for a reminder? I got a $5,000 raise for becoming a manager. Is it worth it? I outlined and laid out a document defining customization for a web banking product. It came out to about 40 pages. It's incredibly easy to generate volume especially when using images. My son didn't get the $100 check I sent weeks ago. He's working in a little grocery store in Boston about 18 hours a week. I'm working about 9 hours a day, but they may expect me to be working 12 hours a day. ~~~~~~~~~ I dreamt about a book -- a book that was so poorly made it was fascinating. The pages were all jutting out at odd angles. Some had deckled edges, some smooth. Many pages were attached at the top and sides making big unreadable wads of paper. The book was a strange size, just taller and thinner than usual. It had a cheap mustardcolor hardback cover and the pages were a light beige. The author's name was in the dream, but I can't remember it, something like Norman Elzacaya. Two women's studies students, one redhaired, one dark, were discussing this author's lecture the previous night. They had purchased his book at the lecture.

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February 16 missing, mistakes
"Sculpture for Enchancing Wildlife Habitat" Isn't that great? A typo? This was a class description from the RISD catalog. It could be a story. ~~~~~~~ I have nothing to write. I'm working so hard every day. I feel drained. There's always dinner. Tonight I made something unexpectedly delicious. Shark with a little soy sauce and frozen oriental vegetables microwaved together in a bowl. The microwaves made the shark explode a bit around the edges. My son said, "What's that popping noise?" I said "It's the shark." He said, "I'm not sure I want to eat shark that's popping." But he liked it. ~~~~~~~ I didn't go to first grade. Or rather, I was there for a few days, or weeks, and then I got skipped to second grade. I still remember my first view of the new second grade class. The kids were all strangers and they nodded inexplicably in unison while praying the Hail Mary aloud before class. Later I grasped they were nodding when they hit the word "Jesus." The second grade nun seemed gigantic. Her name was Sister Henri. She was young and sweet, her robes were black and terrible, and she had a little mustache. For some reason, I made a mistake and told her my birthday was on Epiphany, which is January 6th. On January 6th, I found a lovely little holy card on my desk, picturing a whitish glowing child in a dark green wood. I agonized over this card; I didn't deserve it because it wasn't my birthday. Finally I had to confess to Sister Henri that my birthday was the 26th. She let me keep the card, but it didn't make up for the dreadful shame. Am I getting this right? What is Epiphany? When is it? Once in college I called up a woman I disliked very much because I knew she would remember a word I was searching for -- "soteriology." This means something like the study of salvation. There's a "dazzling theophany" in the eleventh teaching of the Bhagavad-Gita. I think I need some form of the Oxford English dictionary. I want to find out what this "-phany" means. Some kind of appearance? A wish come true? Expected or unexpected? What's the opposite of a "-phany?" I'm never quite there. I didn't go to first grade. I live a block off Hope Street. I was born too late for Epiphany. I don't have a dictionary. It's February. I have more work than I can handle. I'm loooonely. When will this month be over?

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February 17 a vulnerability of poems
Oh, I'm a sort of strange sand worm with many appendages, all carrying odd pieces of luggage, hats, gloves, purses, envelopes, suitcases, flyers, the feet of strangers, the memories of mothers, the travels down the desert highways of writing. I worked hard again all day on technical stuff. I didn't want to go to the open mike but I forced myself. I brought my son. My anxiety over his homework wouldn't let me relax. The MC calls names randomly. It was not good for me. Leave? Stay? Walk up to him and beg him to call me next? I was so wrapped up in myself and the poetry journal project and my son's homework that I failed completely to enjoy myself. Finally, he called on me after an hour and a half of other readers of all shapes, sizes, colors, and varieties. I gave a good announcement of the poetry journal project, and answered a few questions. Then I read two poems very poorly and shakily. Midway through the second I started to quake and couldn't believe I'd have to keep going to the end and I wanted to burst into tears about the subject matter and it was all torture. I left about two readers later to get home to the homework, so I was unable to shmooze with the poets (except for Jean, a little), so I'm feeling very empty, like that was as pointless an exercise as the radio interview. But my son got his homework done with only a little recrimination and late-for-bed. I have no idea how the two poems I read came across. Dazed. As I was gathering up my myriad belongings to leave, the madly romantic Romanian poet of outrageous love and coffee and raindrops came over to me to discuss his submissions. What should I say to him? As a poet, he's among the top 3 or 4 we have. But how do you tell someone you like their love-oozing poetry, without it sounding like a come-on? I feel like he's fishing for women with his poems as bait. I feel like he's a poetic stalker. He wanted a different title on one of his submissions. He said again he was Romanian. He wanted to know if I would come read at an evening he was organizing at Starbucks in Greenwich. I said it would depend on my schedule. He said it was a good thing I was doing (the journal). I think it's a very odd thing that I'm doing. I still think it's a bad idea. I think maybe I should not mingle with the submitters. I don't want to do this again. MY QUESTION: How interpersonal is poetry supposed to be? Ps I should restate my permanent question: How personal is poetry supposed to be?

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February 18 some night singing
Light the green candle, mama, I'm coming home! ~~~~~~ You know what I like? Dog chins. My son just called the dog "the wee trotter." Where does he come up with stuff like that? ~~~~~~ I bonded with people at work today. How long have I been there? I don't know. Four months. I feel very excited about being able to become more conceptual. ~~~~~~~ I went running up and down the street crunching on the icy slush. No cars moving around at 11pm. My ponytail was flying and my ears were enchanted by a cold spell. ~~~~~~~ I still know a lot of the Chemical symbols. I remember them from High School Chemistry. The periodic table, Lead PB, Gold AU, Iron FE. This was part of science that I liked very much. ~~~~~~~ Michael Cunningham has fallen under the bed never to return. Instead I am smitten with Mark Doty's Firebird. A happy accident. A beautiful book. He falls into these little poetic whirlpools in the middle of a memoir. He describes the family's "night singing." I remember night singing. I was in Booneville, Kentucky, staying overnight at the Wilder Hotel ("where things just keep getting Wilder and Wilder"). We were sleeping in the living room in sleeping bags. Jeremy was afraid of bats. I had trouble falling asleep. In the middle, I say MIDDLE of the night, I woke up to the voice of an angel. That awful fat unclean woman I met earlier drinking whiskey out on the porch -- Thelma or Wilma or Velma -- she was singing a song. I think someone accompanied her, a guitar or male harmony. It was beyond doubt the most beautiful singing I ever heard. That was the first shock I ever had about stereotyping people and I have had many since then. The glowing contentment of listening drove away my fears of lack of sleep and losing my glasses and falling bats. Here I was at the Wilder Hotel, comfortable, listening to the voice of an angel in the middle of the night.

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February 23 status / static
Sorted poems last night with my co-editor. We're behaving like unsupervised children in a candy store. Especially with the love poems. I am full of emotion which has nowhere to go. This has seemed like the longest month. Every day just goes on and on for hours, taunting me with how many hours there are yet to be filled with work. I conducted a job interview today with a guy so strange he gave me the willies. After the interview was over, I just went back to work and forgot about him, until now. His hairy stomach was poking out of his shirt. I tried not to stare at it. He had four ornate gold rings. His hands shook. His eyes shook (slightly). He had no questions for me. I hope my boss didn't like him a lot. I'll have to follow up on this tomorrow. We had a derogatory name at Andersen -- R.E. It stood for "recruiting error." I remember three bizarre people especially. Of course, wildly pigheaded arrogant egotism was quite acceptable. (My bemused tolerance goes right out the window when I get overworked and I start wanting to gossip viciously. ) I did a little editing of my own work tonight. It felt good. I can tell what needs to be changed, even though I don't know what to change it to. I need a little breathing room for that....

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February 24 multiple ceilings
Goddammit, there are two ceilings in the poem and I can't get rid of either one of them. Well, prose poets are partial to the ceiling. I just found an Edson poem called "A Person" which has at least four ceilings in it. "Grey is the light and a green tree there and the ceiling asleep, a cobweb puts the ceiling to asleep." "The ceiling snores, it is a lovely place, I think of all things I love the ceiling best." I can't change it to sky because the sky is a cliche. Seeing the sky from the inside of the bathroom would be a very chilly experience. The scale is all wrong. But the ceiling, now the ceiling is just always there, it's human, it makes the world manageable and cozier -- but still, it's out of reach. Who knows what goes on up there. I never vacuum it, do you? This poem I'm working on is shamelessly Edsonian. But in a surprise twist at the end, it turns into a love poem. Is that so wrong? You get that bubble of something in your chest -- with Edson, maybe it's gas, or disgust, or embarrassment, or a wretchedly mistaken desire to laugh at others' misfortune. With me, it's an unhinged bubble of love springing up out of the mulch, getting ready to birth itself out of my mouth and run around the world in its slippers. Ah. Either way it's uncomfortable.

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February 25 multiple floors
Goddammit, there are also two floors in the poem and I didn't even notice that until tonight. Symmetry anyway. There's also a deep underlying doggy influence in that poem. I can't help it. My dog has seeped into my subconscious. Tonight I wasn't miserable. Why? I stopped at A's to pick up the drawings. We talked for awhile. She had carefully prepared her son's poem for me, a disk and hard copy in a manila folder with a plastic disk pocket. We went over the bio. We talked about what to take out of the bio, if I had to. We talked about her friend's artwork and how she needed to have her change the sign -- from "Keep Out" to "Welcome." As we parted, she said "this means a lot to me." I didn't expect her voice to be breaking. I said "I'm glad to be able to do it." So the poetry journal becomes part of her grieving. This little old three line poem is the most meaningful center of the book (for me). Who knows what will mean what to whomelse. Creativity is a wily architecture. It will also slobber and drool and do things to your pant legs if you let it.

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February 27 don't slip, you'll drown
I won't go there. I just decided. I'm the editor. Why does this poet give me so much trouble? Oops. I said I won't go there. I still want to go there. I'm all riled up. I want to join a contest of who can suffer more better in sweeter words. But I won't write in ironic bitterness. Even though it's a handy voice for evoking a reaction, with a fine tradition which he invokes in every line. Terribly exciting. But forced and immature. Sorry. Um Um Um, what am I doing? Oh yes, flooded with poetry. Since the deadline is March 1st, every last minute poet is coming forth. I'm angry and overwhelmed. Swirling words and people. The editor maintains her balance by relying on typography. And alphabetical order (by AUTHOR). And housecleaning. And telling the bad stories to her girlfriend and eating chocolate cream pie and saying the serenity prayer. Sage Iambe, Baubo, the Fool, puncture all my attitudes and lead me back to myself!

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February 28 inflamity
I am definitely in the "personality defect" phase of the editorial process. Optimism flies up and flaps around my head with its hard white wings. I capture it and hold it close, feeling its many systems, its bones, blood vessels, its exactly arranged feathery layers, all functional, all in place, feather upon feather even after frenzies. Optimism's heart beats twice as fast as mine. Pessimism calls out to the great emptiness afterwards, Come rescue me, she's doing it to me again, make her stop! I recognize its traces, its lichens, its patches, its plaques. It leaves them on my body: twinges in the back and ribs, reddened eyes, the headache, the nervous cheeks, the strangled voice, punching myself in the face at night. old bouquet crawling lily falls apart drops her limbs her shooting stalled dried orchid skin of aged rouge faints above the algal pool

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February 29 the limits of action
We reviewed the journal covers from the graphic design class tonight. I don't want to write about that. I have nothing to say. It has to sink in. Cecilia and her orange juice, her carrots, her fruit Mentos, and her illustrations. Last minute calls from people who want to participate in the poetry journal. The deadline is tomorrow. Talking about the project IS the project. John and his sincere blue eyes, his curly brown hair, and his profoundly gentle manner. Colors. Spring green. Mustardy gold. The pink of feminine hygiene. We picked a black and brown design -- I am such a pushover for curves. Tomorrow the beta starts, software and documentation on the street. I sucked up most of my coworker's tasks into my voracious production machinery. He seems a little bewildered and extremely slow witted. When I'm under pressure I go into warp speed. I reminded myself today -- I'm going to take a fall. I'm going to take a fall. I'm going to overstep or understep something, I don't know what, I don't know when, but it's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. March will be risky.

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