What used to be called poetry

I rummaged through my old writing last night and found a few choice pieces I forgot I had written. I wrote the following in a creative writing class with Michael Heffernan, who is one of the greatest poets I've ever read Some of his work.

You'll forgive the language and content, dear readers. I was once...well...maybe am still inappropriate at times.



ON LOVE
She used to make daisy chains for him
She'd pick apart the stems and join the flowers until
they seemed to go on forever.

Yesterday, she found out that sometimes
Daisies aren't enough.
Sometimes one needs iron cuffs
To hold people together.
So what she did was
Fashion a chain of iron daisies forged
From an imagination
That could never be contained

CHEMISTRY
Isn't it funny how her spiky
Blond, artfully not fixed hair and
Crystalline blue eyes shaded by
The white powder boys don't know
Makes them sparkle and
Carefully ripped jeans carelessly (painfully?)
Shrunken to fit her dieted,
Exhausted thighs
All thrown together by fate
Or whoever the hell is the
God of beauty
To suck in the testosterone crazed masses.
And I sit and watch her
Chit-chat with them, grinning
With her one perfect dimple
And her cherry lipgloss that she
Discreetly tucked into her backpack (I saw it)
Nondescript and got two numbers
In the time it took me to highlight
"positron emission" in my
Chemistry book.

REMINISCE
gone to the bar, heard my professor's band
The best EVER.
Being there, with you;
we drank enough to rekindle flames and fires.
I had propensity for damage.
Burned the inside of my wrist with
your lighter. Felt real for a minute and
Wanted you to want to be tainted, branded. Wanted you to want me.
Burned you too.
My scar is evaporating, you with it.
We consummate the inferno once in a while
Every time, now, the mark fetches
that night.
Fucking when we got home
In front of your friend. Pushing each other - the envelope
You showing off your control; me, wanting you to know how much
I didn't care.
Didn't care enough to mark myself with you.
To blush into the mattress
Wasn't drunk enough, not nearly:
flashes
the stools from the bar we met in
Socked feet
gin candy canes Christmas trees red polka dotted tables wrecked alarm clocks un-sheeted mattresses protracted drives expectation wonder hope moving trucks New Orleans Washington Biloxi Austin ache computers rambling walks cigaretes un-kept resolutions unborn ideas coffee cups against walls muffled screams you on the couch me smelling your shirts packing leaving empty boxes

Our life together in seconds, in ash, in scars and burns and dust.



Isn't it weird to visit your former self like an old friend? It's like seeing the fallen head cheerleader. There's so much pity and wisdom in a life re-visited.

Lazy...

I am not a lazy woman. I was not a lazy child. I spent my days growing up feeding chickens, gathering eggs, doing chores, cooking, cleaning, raking leaves, moving cattle. In short, I lived a farm life. I loved it. When I wasn't doing those things, I was reading or playing in the dirt.

I've spent a lot of time lately trying to figure out what it is that will bring me joy where my career is concerned. I'm a fixer. I like a problem that has a clear beginning and end. So science - well...it might not be working out. You see, we've talked about this before, but science is best when it leads to more questions. This is sort of the recipe for eternal frustration for me. And that, of course, is the appeal of going back to school so I can do medicine. It doesn't much matter in which capacity, doctor, nurse, nurse practitioner, physician's assistant...it's a question of: a patient comes in sick/hurt/broken, the patient leaves with a diagnosis/plan/cure/fix. Easy, right?

Not really. Doing medicine means more school. If my grant doesn't get funded, my family is going to be in a world of hurt. I'm going to have to find a way to compensate for my salary at State QUICK, OR - I'm going to have to pull my kids out of their school and go back to school myself while teaching at night. I haven't really decided...it's not just my decision, you see. My husband has a say, too. And there's still the fingers-crossed, eyes-shut-tight hope that the USDA answers my plea and this isn't an issue for another two years.

I digress: The point is - the things I loved as a child are the things I'd like to do as an adult. And so, I'm currently seeking a job as a person who reads books for fun, plays in the dirt, and gets paid a WHOLE ton of $$$. Any suggestions?

XOXO