April 9, 2022

and some days
it’s the procrastination
that turns to housework
that’s all that’s needed

and the sadness
that turns to book-reading
that really mattered

and the morning poetry
awkwardly completed at night
that was what had to be done.

April 8, 2022

autumn is a time for falling asleep
spring is the awakening

autumn is preparing for the months of winter depression
spring is shedding those sads

autumn is slowing, pondering, thinking, dying
spring is the adrenaline amping up again

so why do i feel so tired and sad and ponderous
while spring is all around me?

~~~

coffee
music
cat on lap
dog on couch
kip across the table
help me enter the day
my way

~~~

i know my headspace isn’t great
if i obsess over things
or
if i shoot from one subject matter
to the next
to the next
with no real resolution
and no thinking through to the end.

so why are my indications
entirely opposing?
is this my black and white thinking coming to some sort of fruition
or is this the source of my non-grey-mind?

March 8, 2022

falling asleep just
thinking
about the words i’m about to write
and the things necessary to be done today
and the accomplishments i need to do before this week ends

there’s a van down the street
just a few doors down
rumbling
and popping
and waking itself up for the day

if this van with
[clearly]
many things in need of fine tuning inside it
can take its time
getting itself ready
for its tasks for the day
then i certainly can wake myself up
through poetry
[and coffee]

~~~

but
i’m not awake
yet

~~~

the fake fireplace glows
and blows
forced heated air
at us
while the tiny humidifier
blows vapored water
up
into the air
into the plant beside it
reflecting in the mirror behind it
and we drink our coffee
as the dog tries so hard to lick her legs
on the couch
(that has become 100% hers)
and the cat is…

…somewhere

(a standard morning at the kips’)

February 18, 2022

my brain is not awake yet,
nor is my body, really,
and the first sip of coffee is cheap
when
you know you could sleep for hours
even with the whole mug in your bloodstream,
and i keep getting distracted by tiny chores
which probably could/should be done,
but will it take away from these
morning page poetry streams of [semi-un]consciousness(?)
and
why can’t i think of myself like i did
at fifteen
seventeen
nineteen
when i fancied myself a mini-ee cummings
well on my way to
making language my b*tch(?)
even though now it’s probably more reality-based
to think that someone else has thought of
‘streams of [semi-un]consciousness’
before,
but boy,
did it give my ego a boost
to think i was thinking
entirely new thoughts
new concepts
new words
new communications
with new people
instead of how my brain is now
knowing that there are no new ideas
and instead of that spurring me on
to create without worry of plagiarism,
it instead spurns every concept i have
with the barrage of
‘you will never be creative enough
to think of anything
fully
new’
[
you
].

February 7, 2022

i keep pondering early in this
panini
when i wrote and wrote
pages upon pages
freehand
freeverse
free of other older morning page expectations
and i wondered what the world would be like
‘post’
pandemic…
and i felt it,
at the very core of my being
that we’d
‘go back to normal’
before it was really,
truly,
clear
to do so,
and that the ‘normal’
we were heading back towards
had the potential to change,
to be a ‘normal’ benefitting more people
than the normal
benefitting a very
very
very
tiny
percentage,
but i felt it,
that it wouldn’t change
we “couldn’t” change
we wouldn’t change.

and lo and behold
all my strife
from mid-march 2020
to april, may, june, july 2020
most of that has come to fruition:
we aren’t ready,
people are still catching
ventilizing
dying
and half the population is still
pretending
this virus
doesn’t exist.
and of course
we’re going
‘back to the grind’
as if that’s a good thing,
as if it’s strength
or a moral righteousness
that gets you through
(rather than random genetics
and generational privileges
and a system set up to benefit
the few)
and as if
this ‘grind’
is our entire culture
(i mean, at this point, it is,
but that doesn’t make it
good
or right)

and i wish i had something better to say
than ‘i saw this coming’
i mean, i’m sure folks more versed in
infectious disease
and sociology
and economy
and the ‘why’s’ of all this
also saw this coming…
i guess i just wish
i’d had more time
to live in a world of hope
than i actually got.

February 3, 2022

still don’t know what the groundhog said
guess i could look it up
(even tho it has very little to do with anything real,
but we all need a distraction these days, right?)

six more weeks of winter
(as opposed to ‘early spring’)
but six more weeks isn’t terrible;
the full month of February
(which is annoying, but expected)
and then half of March
(March, which lost its status as
‘normal month’ way back in 2020;
i don’t think i’ll ever look at another
March
the same way again)

but i think,
i *think*
i can do it.

~~~

most mornings
the sunlight blazes through
our east-facing windows,
catching in our eyes
as we sit to write
morning pages and morning poems
and things of that nature
and the shine is so great
that half my computer screen
fades to white
and generally
we put up with it
for the warmth
(and for the plants)

but this morning
the sun is barely making itself known
through these dense clouds
bringing with them rain
and drear
and we miss that sun
not just the warmth
but also the light
the indication of daytime
the blasting through our senses
waking us up
in a way
that only coffee comes close
to imitating

~~~

i keep wanting/desiring/being drawn to the
writing
of tough stuff
in the evening
but in the morning
when i have more wherewithal
to contemplate
the complicated
my aversion to tackling
the ‘tough stuff’
grows
exponentially

(but maybe one of these mornings)

(or maybe one of these days i’ll just have to
write
in the eveningtime)

January 30, 2022

not knowing what to write
from day
to day
makes the flow of
‘i don’t know what to write
day to day’
both overdone
and
sparklingly new

like, if one looks at the
subject matter,
the themes between the lines,
it all kind of
muddles together,
but the ways i go about
expressing
these same subjects
can sometimes have
lives
within the poems themselves.
like the tempo of
‘it’s been days since i knew what to write’
is much slower than the pacing of
‘i’m itching for something to write about
and i feel on a precipice
about to find
it’
and the stuttering step of
‘who am i and what do i write’
clashes at its core with
‘i’m figuring out
that it’s ok
if i don’t know what to write
from day
to day
to day,
i’ll just write
and write
and see what happens
and what writings
may sling
from my head
to my fingertips
to this [formerly] blank document page
before my bespectacled eyes’

and that,
i find,
is the difference.

November 29, 2021

i’m feeling
settled
[not settling]
comfortable
in my own skin
in my place in life
content.

this is not an emotion i am familiar with
at all
but it’s nice to know it can come to me
every once in a while
(and maybe, just maybe,
this settled/comfort/contentment,
can propel me towards my next
endeavor.)

~~~

i feel like
i don’t do
Morning Pages/
Morning Poetry
the same as i used to,
but that could be ok.
maybe there are days when i need
to write/poem it out,
and those are the days when my word count
lands solidly into the mid-three digits,
and there are a few days when i know what i need to say
and one short poem
is all i need for the morning,
and then there are days like today
when i don’t need to write to figure things out,
but i’d like to write to
have something written
(and also because i’m figuring out how to be awake)
so i suppose
it’s all
alright.

~~~

someday
i’ll count all the hobbies
i’ve acquired
over the years
(and those with supplies
but no real forward movement)
but for today
i’ll say
i’m happy i have a spouse
who keys into my ever shifting hobbies
(and also flits in and out of their own)
so soon, this house will be filled with
wood whittling projects
and perhaps even a soldering pencil!