Have you ever had a poem, or in most cases, several poems, that defined you? Or spoke to you profoundly, or touched you seeringly, or that you held close inside you more than any others? Some grab your mind the first time and never let go, and some sneak up on you and make a quiet home in your heart. Thanks to Rob for giving me this sneaky one.


Today is Wednesday

which is the day I have decided to understand.
I have tried since morning.
Now for the second time
my shadow is longer than I am
and still I can't understand.

I have asked everyone to help me.
I ask the bus driver to help me.

He said, My name is John Foster Kelley
which is a name you will need.

I asked the waitress with mustard
on her mouth.
She said, I have a surgical
scar on my belly.

I asked a policeman. I said,
Today is Wednesday.
He said, Go ask your mother.
I asked my mother.

I never saw you before in my life

son.

Tomorrow is Thursday.
Thursday I will understand.
If I can find the right bus
the right cafe
I will say,
Somebody help me.

Friday I will find myself
the one who can help me.

I will recognize it at once,
breasts of a big woman
face of a dog
the hinder parts held high
as a camel rises
in the unheated intergalactic spaces
under the gray blanket of my
most dry dreams.

I will say, What about the whales?

and it will be done.
Friday I will do it myself.

Then I will tell everyone my understanding.
At first, of course, they will not hear,
and when they do they will not allow me near
inhabited places.
I will grow old sending in scribbled notes
tied to the teats of cows and the tails of goats.

- Miller Williams

So three days before Friday's slam, Big Poppa E calls Doug to back out of featuring, and although thats a really asshole thing to do, we figure was just a victim of gas prices. And ultimately, it turned-out to be a good thing. Because, after Thursday's open mic (which had a decent crowd) I asked Doug what he was gonna do about the lack of a slam feature and the fact that no one would know about it until they showed-up. He said, in short, "That depends; do you have a feature set ready to go?" The bitch.

So I decide, after conferring with Heather, who was still researching at Yale (and discovering historical and literary inaccurasies that will send changes from the Library of Congress to every state school in the country - I love my wife), that I will do it.


Do you remember what happened the only other time I featured at something? Well my crowd was almost twice as big this time. There were nine people watching my set.
So it was actually a good thing that Big Poppa E didn't show because the turn-out would have been a huge insult to him and I, at least, would have felt ashamed.
What's worse is that I perform better in front of a large crowd (even better in a small space), so I pretty much should have phoned my set in. Doug and two others then did three poems each. I really respect his "the show must go on" attitude. He passed the hat and I made $13, plus I got the Busload of Poets DVD from 2000 (of the Poetry Slam bus tour that I caught at the Green Mill in Chicago and changed my life - it really did).

...

The Bipolar II meds I've been taking have worked quite well, but also have given me chronic diarriah for two months (a very uncommom side-effect for that drug; welcome to my world). So I'm having to switch to something else right now.


I'm kayakking in a typhoon.

If you are sick of my depressing posts, don't read this.

I am becoming more and more aware of the fact that for the past almost two months, not a week has gone by that I have not applied for a job or multiple jobs. And no one will hire me.
Admittedly, I have been applying for certain jobs over others. I cannot accept never seeing my wife and friends by having to work perpetual evenings and weekends. But regardless, there has still been a reasonable variety. And no one wants me.
I have been willing to take a paper route for several weeks now, but Heather doesn't want me to because it will be meaningless on my resume (and I doubt we'd break even on gas). And now even the available paper routes are dwindling. And in the newspaper, I'm finding fewer and fewer jobs that even have a chance of paying me what we need.

We're fucked.

I don't want to leave here yet. Our lives here may seem simple and somewhat futureless, but at least there are places (meaning people) down here where I feel I am needed, or where I feel that I am contributing. In Gurnee, Illinois, and it's surrounding suburbia, there is NOTHING for us! The concert, arts and slam scene is 1 1/2 hours away in Chicago, and there is NO garuntee that I'm any more likely to find a job up there. Heather either. When I lived up there for a year, all I did was work. I had no external life, and I did not write! Therefore, I don't want to go back there! At least not like this, once again beaten by life, once again having failed.

I realize that God's vision is bigger than mine, and it always will be, but if we have to move up there and live with my parents, I will be completely demoralized and thrust into a very deep depression. That, based on my self-knowledge, is what I see.

If we have to go back up there to survive, it will have a destructive impact on our marriage. I will fall deep into the parts of my psyche and behavior that distress Heather the most, and that she feels the most helpless to effect. I will look at what I have always seen(in both micro and macrocosm): my life, on the brink of new forward motion, undercut and pulled-down. I will believe that nothing has changed, that I have not changed, and I never will.

I have no occupational identity, in an age when we are told that that is all that matters. But even if we cast-off those beliefs, we must work to survive (especially when we are in what my dad called "severe financial distress").

Have you ever felt doomed? Seeing no way out? My Bipolar is not under solid control, and the current med is giving me cronic side-effects, so we'll have to try a new one, and thats always healthy for the mentally distressed. And by how I'm feeling, I truly may have caught Heather's Mono. Gas won't stop going up! All of this can only continue to inhibit my chances for a job. So yeah, I feel doomed.

I guess I should go apply at Sonic, be willing to accept 6 bucks an hour, and prepare to face the daily struggle of trying not to slit my wrists.

I apologize if you read all of this, because I'm going to feel guilty for depressing you. But I have to put it somewhere, and I abstain from going through all of this with people face-to-face because the last thing I want to be in a relationship is a bring-down. At least here you can stop reading.

Dropping Her Off at the Airport
by Scott Crain

She is gone.
For a week.

The dog will be a wreck.






*(a new buick to whoever can tell me the name of the poet whose style I am using)

Last Thursday was an important day for me. Well, it was Thursday night/Friday morning. But I connected with new people in a way that I haven't in a very long time. Plus, I got to be part of an open mic crew that warmed-up the crowd for Mike McGee, and then later just hang-out and have some down-to-earth conversations with him and some friends . . . new friends! Do you know how long it has been since Heather and I have made new friends? Not simply aquaintances, but friends? Too long.

And then on Friday I wrote more than I've written in weeks, at least as far starting and crafting is concerned. I wrote a full poem on Monday, but I felt like I was forcing myself. Friday was a day of writing inspiration. I laid down on the couch while Heather cooked dinner (I felt like an asshole for not helping her, but I was crashing hard and needed a power nap. I'm definately sick with something, I just hope I haven't gotten Heather's Mono), and I couldn't fully fall asleep. On that edge of sleep, I heard lines rise up into my mind. Some ran together, forming stanzas, even pages. Some stood alone, singularly representing somethings that I would create from them. I couldn't rouse myself enough to put it all down, but after dinner I sat and tried to draw them out of me again. I'm pleased with what I got, but I wish I had retained more. I just try to remind myself that God is faithful in a multitude of ways, and the missed lines will return.

And then last night Heather and I had amazing sex. It was what goodbye sex should be, even though it is only goodbye for a week.
She is going to Yale for a week to do research for her master's thesis. The writer she is studying is so obscure that she has to go to where he taught 90 years ago in order to find more than half of his work. But, she truly believes that William Henry Bishop is an author who has, for the most part, fallen through the cracks of history, and is a very important author of his time. I love to see her so excited over this. Especially since she is going to have to work her ass off.

. . .

We also recieved an anonymous $300 in the mail. We feel awkard about it, but we really freaking need it. It came with the Blue Day Book, a silly but cute book, with great pictures, about cheering yourself up.

So many people have been generous to us. God is keeping us afloat from moment to moment, one little bit at a time. I suppose that's the way it always is, but we but don't realize it when we think we have so much, and simply take our lives for granted.