I can’t sleep. I don’t know why. I overslept this (yesterday) morning by an hour, waking up at nine instead of eight. Maybe that’s the culprit.
I find times like these to be the best for inspiration, especially in the poetry department. I often can bang a couple out that may or may not reflect my current mood at the time. My latest, entitled Elemental, is a less than serious musing on some institutions or values (or institutional values, for that matter) that we hold dear, and some things that I, as an individual and an artiste (yes, ar-teest) think about from time to time, including the muse that keeps me awake and writing poetry when I should be in bed dreaming of interpolitical power plays between my roommates and I (as I dreamt the other night). Elemental is less about the real or even the metareal, but rather the scope of such seemingly untouchable qualities, marrying them to real or imagined situations that 1) defy expectation and 2) cause a slight upward twitch in your mouth muscles, causing what might be considered a smile.
Because it’s funny that the City has indigestion. I mean, right?
Of course, it’s all very stream of consciousness and has no real bearing on metered poetry, except the barest hint of a rhyme here and there, and some measure of purpose in verse/line separation. Perhaps Van der Leun can do a bit of editing on it, as he has in the past. Editing my poetry is not one of my strong suits. Once it’s out, it rarely is examined more than once for spelling and grammar and for the most part, I’m confident of its purpose, if not its success. I’m a rare species, a poet with no sense of parting. I don’t miss the words I write, I don’t dwell on them, and I don’t expect any return from their departure from my mind. It is, to me, merely an end to a means, that which only authors and artists and madmen can understand.
Interesting fact #1: I was an English major in college. True. Once I figured out Computer Science was the devil, I briefly flirted with Graphic Design, had an affair with Interdisciplinary Studies when Graphic Design decided not to go out with me (it was a rebound relationship), and then English came along, and I never looked back. Well, there was the ongoing fling with Communications, but that was more of a friendship thing. We never were intimate.
Interesting fact #2: I never took a poetry class. Weird, huh? In fact, as an English major, I think I took fewer English classes than most everyone else. Naturally, we all were expected to take a minimum amount to receive the degree, but I was interested in a wide variety of subjects. What classes weren’t part of my “bare necessities” degree were focused outward, on music and art, on history, and the occasional communications class that I found tedious and wretchedly simple (which is why I did so poorly in them!).
So my training in poetry is pretty much nil. Which makes me about as qualified to write it as the next guy. Naturally, this also puts my poetry in the same pedantic category as everyone else. After all, who doesn’t write poetry? I think it’s safe to say I’ll never be Seamus Heaney. Then again, no one is Seamus Heaney except for Seamus Heaney. And even he isn’t Seamus Heaney on a bad day.
Well, it’s 1:40. I’ve been out here twenty minutes, I’ve written a poem and this stupid essay. I’m going to go back to bed and try and wake up at eight. Waking up at nine is so Senior year of college.