New poem, a result of poetry class love

You know something...

I'm really loving my poetry workshop this semester. Something's jiving well with me, my collegues, and my prof. My writing is changing. It's less narrative, more lyrical. Or - the narrative is in the lyricality of the words. Something like that.

Here's a little piece of my latest poem: The Green Lake

I’ll ask you –
will you let the heat of your body part the surface? A stone
skips across the water, leaving ripples of breath

between your answer. I won’t tell you -
this lake hides a beast behind her eyelashes
and tall grass. The hurried breaths of lovers
and the smell of sex exists between the hissing
of snakes and songs of frogs. This body


That's my favorite stanza.

Anyway - life's happened. Between my two jobs, working on my thesis, my grad class, chachalacas in orbit, being bruno's moral support, readings, writings, submissions, rejections, conferences, presentations, book signings, ect - sometimes I really feel like I'm going to lose it. I have a history of taking on too much and not realizing it, and then losing it completely. Aye. It's my talent. Then I get sick. And nothing gets done.

I can do it all, I can and usually do pull through.

So today I'm writing this post to get myself focused. What are my priorities in life right now?

Writing. Of course. Not just for the thesis, for class, for my students, for publication, for blogs - but most importantly, writing for myself. If I write too much for others, I'm afraid that I'll lose natural love of writing that I've always had.

Peace. Finding it amongs the words and mariposas, embracing it.

I think that peace resides in the tiny caesuras of our lives - between the line breaks of hurried breaths.

Next week - that's it. I'm going on vacation.