Enya

I like this song a lot. I plan on writing about my experiences on the bus downtown today. There was a homeless woman sleeping and a woman with tatoos helped a frantic woman begging for a free ride get a ride to the Jeffco action center, so she'd have somewhere to sleep and some food. I myself have been there, so I think it's some fodder for a poem or poems. I'll see.

All Good People (Your Move) by Yes

C likes yes. Maybe I have something to learn here. Wrote a rough sketch of a poem tonight about the contrast between the Chihuahua Desert and the high plains of Colorado. No, it was more about secrets and how language play and even poetry can be a charade to hide oneself from oneself, a mask if you will. Yes, it was about secrets and forgetting.

Ugh. Secrets. Forgetting. I could elaborate, but it seems best to try to write another poem.

Maybe in time the one I wrote can be tightened up a bit. The language of trauma is flat, I said before, and I think there's some plain-speech involved with the reality of violence. Poetry of Witness is what they call it I think, but it is poetry of trauma. In any case, I'd like to read some, but don't think I can. The poem as is gets a little prosy.

A bit tired of the angry polemics of politics everywhere. Yet, I remember the horror of injustice, but I wonder if people's obsessions about it are tied to their own issues.

We learn what we learn? In any case, I'm thinking about deleting all the previous posts again. Blogging is pretty much dead.

I submitted to Psychic Meatloaf. It sounded like an appropriate place. Glad to be rid of worrying where and how I publish, somewhat. The weirder the journal title, the better?

Water Shows The Hidden Heart

Night still black. Still feeling the loss of time. Wires hang above lifeless in the coming cold or warmth. I can’t remember who I am, my name flees in the sound of the wind. Loss comes in waves and freedom its close companion. Free. Freedom in the days. Everyone says let go of the self, but the self was uprooted at an early age, broken and unacquainted with justice. Fairness, he said, was not yours to have. There are a million sounds in a piece of music. We dream with our hearts. The streetlights glow in part through the dark curtains, and I am drawn in. I am sending poems through the quiet neediness. I was but the believer in small miraculous squirrels, blackbirds scattering through the pines. I am waiting for the sound of truth, the sound of beauty and many say both are dead. I watch the clock round its way late and I’m wondering what will come, what will come, what will come?

Some nights you feel alone in such bleakness. I heard the late night comedian chuckle and the din of -morning calling. I am un-awakened in the prime of my life? There’s a heated weariness to what I’ve lost. And letting go, the peace that waves through us like thinning clouds. I was dreaming the sunset over El Paso’s hills, sky of light, blood red, pinkish. Some nights you can’t find solitude, though you’re lonely as can be. Night has fallen through my dreams. Night has wrapped itself about my bones. I heard a whisper of need, a man on the telephone. Dreamt of friends too lonely to call, the river and the stream where blackbirds flew in time when she died, by the hundreds, as if to say, breathe, breathe again before you attempt to sing.

*

Still at midnight, reflecting back on past day lit clouds. The thin ones, others billowing, rising like cobras, silence takes its time. Where am I going? I’m lost in past hurt like a wounded child. I believed in love once, and suddenly it blew my face off.

*

I feel stuck tonight, writing proves difficult. Disappointed in past mistakes, mistakes I re-do quite readily. I feel in some ways a failure, but it's time to take time off from the hectic pace of the world and rest. Maybe I'll be able to write tomorrow.

Led Zeppelin/ Rock N' Roll

I sent the following poems to a journal today:

"The Silent One"
"The Good Dream"
"The Prodigy"
"Meditation"
"Grandparents"
"In Between Notes"

Hope to start doing some writing, generating some new work. Mostly I've been revising. I have to get back to revising the manuscript this week too. I think "The Good Dream" is pretty good and "The Prodigy" needs some work, but I sent them out anyways because I wanted to get some work circulating, lots of work circulating. Didn't realize the one was missing something until after I sent it out. I love that you can submit online now. Geez, it's been so long since I sent work out, that the process has really changed.

G has bronchitis, so I really hope I don't catch it. ugh.

Will go to El Paso, Texas in July and try to make it to Canto Mundo. Not sure I can make it though. The key is to keep writing, no matter the difficulty. If I can't make it I'll be bummed. I look forward to seeing fellows new and old.

Discipline! Discipline! Discipline! Discipline!


I wrote a large number of poems about sexual abuse, violence and trauma which I have difficulty sending out, but maybe I should just send them out. I don't really know what kind of journals would be open to such work. Maybe such work needs to be in prose instead of poetry. The poetry of trauma seems of necessity to be flat, matter of fact. It's difficult to explain, but I've heard that before and it does seem to be the case. Also, the bigger problem is that maybe people don't want to read it. Maybe it's meant for others who have undergone similar trauma in their lives. Violence leaves a great deal of turmoil and difficulty coping that maybe only someone who has undergone it can understand. One forgets events, that come back years later and wakes one from the fog of forgetting. I know this to be true, but I also know that an audience unfamiliar with such things might get lost. I don't know. I will look at some of these poems tonight. The worst thing is I still struggle with embarrassment. Hopefully, I will get over that. I have a large number of poems I wrote at Yaddo that deal with this and it was horrific and I am not sure how an audience would react. Maybe I shouldn't care, just put the work out there and see what happens.

Discipline! Discipline! Discipline!

I dropped my printer and it fell into several pieces. Luckily my mom is sending some money so I can buy another one.

I feel good about writing these days.

Onward!

I need to try to write something tonight. I think I'll feel better if I at least get a few phrases and/or lines done.

FAMOUS PEOPLE WITH BIPOLAR DISORDER

Well, I feel better now from the previous post. Nobody really reads this stuff, but it helps me blow off steam and begin to believe in myself and my poetry again. I dislike syncophants and kiss-ups who base everything on perception of power.

Very sick of the lame goings-on in Latinadad, but I have the support of good writers and good poets, and they know who they are, so in the end, we must just write the next poem and live.

I plan on doing both to the best of my ability here on out.

I'm taking the day off. I attended the poetry workshop, and it was really good. I'll get back to the manuscript tomorrow and later this week. Two people that were going to give me feedback haven't gotten back to me, so I'm hoping to hear from them in a couple of weeks, if not, I guess I'm on my own, but they both have given me very insightful feedback on a few poems, so I will be thanking them in my book, which will eventually come out I sense. I hope to add some publication credits to the book soon. I sent out a large number of submissions as I know how difficult it is to get into journals. I'm curious about what the feedback will be. I remember when I first started sending work out. Things have really changed as you can now submit poems online. Wow, it's much easier to send a file than to mail a batch of poems, but I have mailed a number of batches, and am waiting to hear back. Then I'll send another wave. :)

The poetry workshop is a good group. Everyone in the workshop has publication credentials and two others have published some books. I sense it will be of great help despite the long drive to Northglenn, CO.

I feel part of something poetic again, and it feels very good.

Originally, I titled the blog Chicana Poetics and have wondered if I should change it back, but I started out with news and discussions about invisibility of women poets of color, particularly Chicanas. I find the poetry industry more interested in men of color/ Chicanos than women, and I can't help but notice that we are in some sense fighting invisibility within our own Chicano/a community; moreso, some are only interested in engaging with people they perceive in a position of power or strength. People should be more careful about whom they shun. Anyone at anytime can start publishing like a madwoman. And more importantly it may be good stuff.

Overall, I'm feeling most excellent and blessed. It feels so good to be writing and sending work out. It's a wonder I did any writing at all when I was teaching as an adjunct. I was utterly overwhelmed, and I think single Chicanas have a harder time wading through the stress of supporting themselves and not having a partner to encourage them, but we are blessed with friends and I have a few who have stood by me when I flipped out, others, fair-weather do not understand some things about bipolar or trauma. It seems everyone's your "friend" when you've just won something. But mostly they are in a ridiculous clique of perception over reality.

I may post some videos on bipolar to educate a few folks who seem to think I've grown antennae or something. Nope, I have struggled with this since I was in my late twenties, and only know can I see the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

My forthcoming collection deals with trauma, the repression of violent trauma, and the damage that that does to one's psyche, coupled with bipolar, you get a real mess I think.

In the end, I am free to write now, so all that difficulty in 2008-2009, when I became ill and quite difficult is over. I plan on taking care of my health here on out, and I am slowly developing confidence in my work and words.

Gloria Anzaldua died in poverty I think. Did she have a secure academic position towards the end of her life? I heard she was either an adjunct or a student. It saddens me, the hypocrisy of academia. I guess for now I am done with that pursuit, and I feel more free, eager to write again. It's nice to associate with poets again though too, but too many poets are posers who only associate with people they falsely believe can give them a step, or few steps up the academic ladder of po-biz. In the end, the poems have to give flight to a reader's consciousness. I find many kiss-ups praise lame work. And I was all in knots over it due to my own issues, now, I see that crappy work doesn't hang around too long and good work makes its way.

I've put up with a lot of b.s. from some who assume that since I struggled so long, I would never get anywhere. I was a finalist for the national poetry series in 2003, and I have published in some impressive journals. I can do it again. I will do it again.

The weather in Colorado is sunny and crisp and it feels as if everything has changed for the positive.

I think I spend time ruminating about things, but I am working on letting things go, forgiving and moving on.

A few folks who shall remain un-named, maybe ;), have been playing their cards way wrong when it comes to art and creativity. It's not about playing unfairly or providing invites to the right people in a clique. It comes down to writing well.

American Prayer (Hour)