I am coming to believe that this blog is truly pointless.

This week/weekend is the Fayetteville Arts Festival. Today I compete in a Poetry Slam qualifier at Scarpino's. What I am competeing for is the chance to perform at the Walton Arts Center on Saturday in front of hundreds of people. The top five poets from the qualifier will slam with five nationally recognized slam poets from all over the country. The top performer will get $1,000.

Sounds great doesn't it?

Well, I really don't give a shit. And you know why? Because, no one else does.

I haven't practiced my peices aloud. I haven't worked on memorization. I have NO motivation. Lack of support will do that.

It's not Heather's fault. And it sure isn't the fault of Doug and the other slam scene people. Doug is trying very hard to keep the fayetteville slam and poetry scene alive and vibrant, (fortunately, the Ozark Poets and Writers Guild is still behind him) and I know he needs me right now to help do that.

But even if I make the qualifier, I can garuntee you that against five slam poets with impressive national cred, the winner won't be me. You can take it to the bank.

More importantly, I can't make myself excited about going up on that stage and trying to be a poet and performer when my life is falling apart. I still have no job, and I HAVE been looking. I have had callbacks and interviews, but no one wants me. My wife has Mono and can barely make it through five hours of work before she collapses. We are in financial quicksand. . . . And I'm gonna go put time and energy into prancing my silly ass on stage and performing poetry for no reward?! . . . Yes, I know it is supposed to be personally gratifying and that is supposed to be reward enough, but in the face of all that is wrong and broken in my life, I cannot believe that slamming poetry is worth a shit. At least not without support.

But everyone else has their own agendas and their own problems. And Heather and I are so good at being stubborn about help and putting up a show of being OK. And I know damn well that the poetry slam doesn't mean a tiny fraction as much to any one of our friends as it does to Heather and I.

I can't really blame them. I had friends come out to see me perform at the Ozark Slam Finals, and what happened? I pissed away first place by a stupid mistake and I embarassed myself, Heather, and everyone I had invited by walking out as fast as possible and throwing a tantrum.

I push everyone away. I have no one to blame but me.

And I hate the thought of going up on that stage and performing the same crap I have been doing for the past year. I haven't written a new slam poem in months! Lack of support will do that. Or at least, lack of support in conjunction with our lives going to shit.

Alas. I know that today I will feel the pressure come upon me and I will practice each of my peices at least once. But right now, I can't think of any reason why I will be going up on that stage.

. . .

One of these days I will write something happy on this blog. But happy things have been overshadowed for a long while now. My happy things get shared with other people or get buried. My ruminations are black, and, unfortunately, they come out here. I fear burdening or annoying people with how dark my vision is, so I put it out here.

I caught a fish last week! My first keeper since I started fishing again. My first in 10 years. Heather and Tigger were there. It was a lake trout. But, I caught it at City Lake and it had these red sores that we noticed once we brought it home. So we're not going to eat it, but we still have it in our freezer. Kinda morbid. But it means so much to me I can't let it go yet.

. . .

I DO have some good friends right now. But I also miss my old friends - the ones from college who are still here, near town. Randomly discovering most of them at the Stricken concert last spring left me with a palpable sense of rejection. It was like a gouge in my chest. The goat roast party was a formal thing, not so much a get-together or an outing. And I still wish I knew what I have done to push them away.

Or does everyone feel this way and Heather and I are simply caught up in the wheels of some sick but natural estrangement?

Or do I really, eventually, push everyone away?

And if so, can love really be so absent in me? When I tout it as so principle and central a thing?

. . . This has probably begun sounding random and stupid and self-indulgent. I'm sorry.


"Hardly anything else reveals so well the fear and uncertainty among men as the length to which they will go to hide their true selves from each other and even from their own eyes."
- A. W. Tozer