Off Stride and Full Moons

I'm out of it. Rabid astrological forces or some angry gods have me between their teeth, and they're shaking. I'm battered and bewildered. I can't make sense of anything. I can't get any work done. I only want to be sleeping or drunk. And I don't know why.

Maybe it was the Halloween that passed by with no demarcation, unusual for me. Maybe it was the flu that chewed me up and spit me out in a wad of Kleenex. Maybe it was the bad $17 udon soup or the nine episodes of Forensic Files I ingested. Maybe it was writing about love.

What I do know is that, by Monday, I have to read 100 poems, by the greatest hitmakers of poetry, starting with Bill Shakespeare and ending with Bill Knott. I'm up to Sylvia, wonderful Sylvia. My thoughts are fragmenting into poetry bits.

Up the untended stairs,
prepared for darkness,
but it's light, and warm
for mid-November.

Through a minefield
of turds and trash,
city birds banshees in the trees,
I limp toward home, nothing but work waiting for me.

Sorry for that; Sylvia I'm not. But when poetry happens, caesuras and enjambment and end-stops demand attention. It's just not up to me.

I wish I were in better form because this, above all, is a commemorative post. A year ago today I typed ithardlymatters and pressed "Publish Post." I've said it before, and I'm saying it now: thank you, Massey, for making me do this. It changed my life.

And another thank you, to everyone, for reading. It means everything.