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| Writing Poetry to avoid my lifeThe world of change has come to pass
And all in silent witness be
For all is said and done at last
The changer of the world is me
When Kings of yore shall ask me how
I knew that this could come about
I’ll coyly smile and say “Here now,
I mustn’t let the secret out.”
Sailing on a sea of greenish jealousy
She rides her wave
Passing through a world of not
The wave goes on and on
The world keeps spinning faster and faster till day and
night are one.
Where is my spinning sparrow to poke a hole to see the sun?
I call to him “Dear sparrow won’t you come to save the day?”
But sparrows cannot answer, so I spin and wait and sway.
When broken bottle glass finds its way into my shoe
It makes me stop, and think awhile of you
You with your jagged razor rough edge
Who thrusts me through to a different day
Yet sparkles in the sunlight of a noon tide
Like ribbon dancers through a sky
Hot bubbling mess
Torment, teasing, tense
The chili pepper fire
Of a new found lover’s kiss
Burns me through to another day
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| my cousin Leslie
died yesterday. he'd been fighting cancer for as long as i can
remember, and after many victories he lost. it's weird how the
world works. you see Leslie and i were never close. he was
in his mid 40s with a family and worked as a lawyer for the army.
the army life style combined with the best cancer treatment in the
country meant that they moved around a fair bit, so long story
short-ish i hadn't seen him or his family for about ten years or
so. then last year he and his wife came to chicago for a long
weekend and i, being the residential chicago relative, got to spend a
fair bit of time with them one on one. then i ran into them again
at my uncle's (his father's) retirement gala. after an extremely
long time of knowing i had a cousin named Leslie, but not actually
knowing him, i was given the chance to get to know him as an
adult. he was a great guy. easy to talk to, funny, honest,
and one of those people who seems genuinly interested in what you have
to say.
the family as a
whole is of course sad, but in some ways there is a sort of
relief. everyone has known that Leslie would have rough times
with the cancer and would almost inevitably die from it at some
point. it was always a question of when. no one knew when
it would get really bad again, so it was always sort of hovering over
them. he has two daughters. the younger one is in middle
school. she was born after her dad was diagnosed. she's
never known a father without cancer.
i'm very lucky
to have spent some time with him more recently. it struck me this
morning how young he really was. i guess i always think of death as in
the far future. my gramma for example was nearly ninty when she
died last year. i forget that it could really happen to
anyone. this hit me this morning when i was realizing that Leslie
was about the same age as a lot of my professors. at our school
we have a very different relationship with our professors as
most. we call them all by their first names, and in some form of
the word they become our friends. they seem so young and full of
life, and it hit me that Leslie was young and full of life too, but
that life was drained out of him too early.
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| ouchmy stomach hurts. i think i'm done now. no wait hold that
thought. i am done now. i have gone too far and must now officially
come to terms with the whirlwind that is my life. no more
excuses. i have officially decided to get back on track. yea for me.
i went to pick my mom up from school the last couple of days.
it's a nice arrangement we have when i'm home, so that i can use a car
during the day and am not stranded in the woods for eight hours.
when i was at her school i found myself watching my mom and a
conglomerate of other middle school teachers singing and dancing their
way through the best of the beatles in preparation for the school's
annual musical. lately there's been an insurgence of new teachers
at the school and for the first time ever i found myself watching the
teacher routine involving my peers right along side the peers of my
mother. my friends of friends are right up there along side my
mother shaking their booties to "shake it up baby". it got me
thinking about life and career choices. what would life be like
working an eight hour job for thirty years? i don't know and i
really don't want to know. i was talking to an old friend today
who has to start making decisions about what to do after
undergrad. he's having second thoughts about his original career
aspirations and has recently come across a much more fun and appealing
career move. he mentioned it almost as a joke. i told him
to go for it and i hope he does. it may not be as financially
stable or as practical a choice, but let's consider for a moment what
would happen if this friend of mine doesn't give this crazy idea a try,
or if i never try to be an actor. we would spend the rest of our
lives working mediocre jobs and always wondering what might have
been. whereas if we go for it, who knows? i could end up
with a Tony and he could end up on the cover of Forbes as the year's
best entrepreneur . you
never know do you? and maybe i will end up as a middle school
teacher with my only link to musical theatre being the annual spring
show, but at least i will be able to say i tried.
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| cherries. i smell like cherries. where did that come from?
st. patrick's day rocked my socks off. very wonderfully great times had with friends old and new.
now i'm home
and listening to nostalgic music which is making me sad and miss
school. i desperately need this break, but i don't know if i can
handle a whole week without working and seeing everybody. i mean
seriously i could pass this entire week without looking at a single
piece of music or stretching a single muscle in my body, without a
single bruise or blister on my feet, without trying to figure out what
it feels like to be a lightning bolt or a 1930s call girl. i
could, potentially, spend the whole week on my parents' couch watching
tv. ew. weird. i NEED to work!!!!!! must find a piano asap!
side note: i really love the song "anytime". and "stop and see
me". oh and like every other song philip gives me. what would i
do without him? that is all
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| We
had sun and double digit temperatures for two days in a row!!!!
woohoo! spring is so totally in the air and i am
pysched!!!! i just couldn't help but be happy this weekend.
nice weather somehow makes everything seem ten times nicer than it
ought to and i support that. it is clearly a dixie chicks
moment!
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