Bob Dylan's "Day of the Locusts" is my new theme song for my experience in higher education. Yup, he sums it up quite nicely, my experience. I pursued four degrees, trying to learn how to write. It was definitely a mixed bag of magic and dust. The magic came from reading every poem I could get my hands on; the dust came from trying to be somebody.

Competition in academia, at least in the backward provinces, isn't pretty. I am relieved for the most part that I have escaped the strange distances between people that occurs. This is partly from rejection, partly from needing to find some recovery for my illness, and partly from the current the universe has me gliding quite nicely through these days.

Someone close to me insists that part of my difficulties came about due to the fact that I am not upper middle class. He believes selling oneself is a learned behavior from the economic background of the individual. I spend the majority of my time interacting with people who have had no higher education in a different way than than my failed efforts to communicate with academics. I am quite successful among meth-heads, crack smokers, brilliant schizophrenics and the roller-coaster moods of a friend. I can negotiate this landscape. It is difficult after being in school forever and NOT in this world-- a world of honesty, anger, open rudeness and yelling!

I mean this stuff quite seriously. I do not believe the language of the educated is superior, it's just a different language. It's a privileged language, a language deemed necessary for success. And oh success, that two headed snake, that lying son-of-a-bitch, that mummified fate. But the question here is how much does economic background affect "fit" and "comfort" in such settings?

A friend's father is a prof at Berkeley and he, the father grew up quite poor in New Mexico, but he too had to learn the lingo. The friend speaks up and feels what he has to add to a conversation is pertinent, necessary and meaningful. Usually what he says doesn't make a lot of sense, but once in a while he'll pull off a zinger wit-filled comment. It's amazing how many people will nod and approvingly compliment him when he makes no sense. This is academia at times.

I just now recognized that the father didn't let go of his straight forwardness, and this perhaps has hampered him in academic settings. Mostly he put his nose to the grindstone and published like a mad man. This too works?

Watching videos of David Foster Wallace discussing education is interesting too. He too seems to believe there's something dry and distant and that many people teaching aren't into the teaching.He is critical of avant garde fiction, calls it "un-fun." I don't know. I know there's often a sense of supremacy in the academic ideal, that one be producing, hustling, marketing, networking, interacting, schmoozing (you hear this openly!) And yet, I think the story, the "real" story in my life lately is working-class people, downtrodden people, people who live simply. And yes, this can get frustratingly difficult. For example, I don't watch much TV and this makes me appear alien and out of touch. How can I NOT watch American Idol like an addict needing a fix? But fact is, I love my friends. They are cool. They don't write and yet come to every reading cheering me on, and even though they can't afford a book, they are there genuinely, happily and best of all they like my poems, especially my curse poem to 7-11. They get it. They get me, and this makes me a million times healthier than dealing with someone at CU coming into my office, snubbing me about not having read so and so.

No. I read people.

The ordeal the women in Cleveland went through and are going through also unnerved me. Many people are horrified how a human being could take control of another human being's freedom. The bombing at the Boston marathon was also sad and horrific. I want to write today about sexual assault, rape, and childhood sexual abuse and healing, how women are objectified in the media and by men and pornography daily. We can become numb and move on quickly regarding these acts of violence and oppression. Society has a move-on to the next act of insanity brief attention span. There are some sick individuals, some damaged individuals who oppress and abuse. It is often a cycle. There has always been such individuals throughout history.

But there are some individuals, as a friend stated, who seem to have no reason for their being aggressive, hateful and violent.

As a survivor of rape and childhood sexual abuse, I can only say that I truly believe negative thought patterns emerge because of society's right wing extreme religiosity that a woman should be pure or a virgin, demure, quiet, amicable and non-verbal, or at least non-confrontational. It's not just religion, double-standards and sicknness, but it is also the objectification of women in mainstream media, pornography and society in general.

I have found a voice through writing, and it is there that I have gained my power back. I am working on doing so in other aspects of life. I am okay where I am at because I am learning to be compassionate towards myself and shed those harsh views, those core beliefs that are entrenched in one's psyche often through such abuses.

I believe Healing is a means of taking one's power back. Negative thought patterns often emerge when one feels victimized by trauma. Healing involves changing and re-framing the shame, humiliation and distrust that occur when one is abused. This is a difficult battle, one that should not be dismissed or discounted in any way in my opinion. Yes, we acknowledge darkness, which I feel I do in my new collection, SEVEN (3: A Taos Press), but there is the issue of taking one's power back, finding one's voice, shedding those negative core beliefs. For me, this is the core of transfiguring what is dark into beauty.

It is in acknowledging darkness or violence occurred that one can develop an awareness and self-concept,  which has often been damaged and distorted. For me, through my writing, I see the beauty that comes from such triumphs as gaining one's self-esteem and healing as transforming.

Healing is a slow process. It takes strength, fortitude and commitment. It is in my opinion more important than focusing on that darkness, that which is meant to dis-empower an individual.

This is one reason I argue for the lyric I in my poems. Fragmentation, loss of a sense of power, all these things can emerge when one is a survivor of long term abuse. Such stories can reaffirm the experience of others, which I have found as women who have read my book share similar experiences and relay that to me. All in all, there is light, hope and power in such striving.

This month is mental health awareness month, and I am working on being an advocate for mental health issues. PTSD is one issue I feel needs to be addressed in order to combat the abuse of young girls and women.

I have been watching too many David Foster Wallace videos on YouTube tonight. Brilliant mind. Such a loss! Here he discusses television and commercial entertainment and says avant-garde fiction is "academic and cloistered" and among other things "un-fun." I tried reading Infinite Jest in the nineties but found it too thick and overwhelming to read. I think I will be trying again. Just heard a video of him reading a short story and it blew me away. I have recently written or I should say drafted three stories. The fourth one is really not a story or a poem. In any case, I have written it, and I will lay claim to it even though I'm not sure what it is.

My reading last week went well. Friends and people in my art class said when I read it's like I'm a different person. They say this mostly because I am quiet and shy or as my friend says, unassuming.

When I read the poems it was as if a new me came out because I am learning to trust my language. Once in grad school, a friend said, why don't you have confidence; you have a solid grasp of the language. Still at times I lean towards self-effacement because that is what I've been entrenched with for nearly half a century, but none-the-less, I feel more whole when I am engaged with language whether it be poetry or fiction or some sort of cross between the two genres.

Love this video!

Trying to sell a book of poems is like trying your whole life to avoid suffering. Trying to sell a book of poetry is like trying to teach pigs to fly, talk jive to a turtle, sing sweet nothings to every loss you’ve had. There’s a seaside burden in such loneliness. You walk to and fro, hoping to sell a bit of your wounded and triumphant soul and nobody gives a damn it seems. So you try to sing louder too. You try getting religious even with pleating prayers to a foreign god. There’s wind-chimes and all the lies come like a new kind of wind-song. And luck comes to you like freedom and you too breaking bread and drinking wine, and there’s an infinity of truths dancing through your mind. Every shadow a blessing in summer’s hot throat. Yes, you too nothing but a brief season.

My new website is up at http://www.sherylluna.com

It was designed by Amit Ghosh's team out of El Paso, Texas! They did a great job.

I have three readings scheduled now. The first two are on the website: West Side Books, in Denver and Innisfree Books in Boulder. Click on link for West Side Books info. The third reading will be at Ziggi's Coffee House (corner of Federal and 104th) May 16th for Third Thursday Open Mic Featured Poet 7-9 pm.

I'll re-post info about readings as they come up here and on facebook.

To Purchase SEVEN: 


Special Pre-Release Order: SEVEN is available for $15.00 per book. 

Please mail checks to: 3: A Taos Press, P.O. Box 370627, Denver, CO 80237. 

After 30 April 2013: SEVEN is available for $17.00 plus shipping from:

3: A Taos Press, Amazon, or SPD Distribution. 

I'm thinking about poverty this afternoon. I recognize that many in society think it is a choice, a laziness, a lack of ambition etc. I've spent most, well, all of my adult life in poverty. I currently receive a social security check for 838.00, which Repubicans want to cut. In any case, it's not the politics of the matter, but the realization that I've lived most of my life in abject poverty that has me thinking. And interestingly enough, this is not a complaint about it, but it's rather a celebration of the fact that I have that lovely gift-- time. Now, I am at ease with it because I am no longer struggling to juggle 6 plus classes a semester with no health benefits. Adjunct hell, I'll call that. Now, I have time to write, time to heal, and these are huge blessings which make up for the low income, but the low income means I can't afford things like AWP, sending out to too many contests etc. A low income means living within one's means very carefully.  Sometimes, I think there is such a thing as destiny, or more so a place where the universe wants us, a place where we are meant to learn and grow. A friend thinks any concept like this or belief in God is silly, but for me, things seem to fall in place when you accept what the universe is giving.

I am going to advocate for mental health rights in the state of Colorado. After the tragic shootings in an Aurora movie theater, people who have a mental illness, are at risk of losing rights. The stigma which says most people with mental illness are violent is simply incorrect. There is so much stigma surrounding mental illness, I feel the universe is guiding me towards trying to tell my story in order to help others, who in many circumstances, are unable to speak for themselves. It's the one thing I can do. I can write letters to legislators and possibly speak at events. It's something which seems to be calling me, as I keep being asked to attend such events, to strive to support mental wellness in the state of Colorado.

My SECOND collection of poetry, in part, deals with trauma, both personal and cultural, and how one seeks and works for recovery. This concept of recovery has come into my life as well through various groups, invitations, therapy and organizations in Colorado. Recovery is all about healing and becoming whole and compassionate towards yourself. When one is broken by trauma, one can only recover and grow as best she can. A metaphor for trauma is a tree sapling that has been damaged, possibly almost broken, and then, despite the trauma, continues to grow. The direction of the growth may be haphazard and even appear abnormal. For example a sapling with a broken branch may find that very branch crawling along the ground, before gaining the strength to grow upward. It looks different.

Poverty in a sense, may be a symptom of having been ill and untreated, but when we are in flow with our purpose in the universe, we are essentially floating with the current rather than swimming and taking in water against the current, we are blessed. This is something I truly believe. We let go of that ambition that is unhealthy for us, we are drawn to the things that bring us to a place of compassion for ourselves and others. Poverty is really not such a terrible thing if it allows you time and peace, yet for many years I struggled against poverty in an unhealthy way. My worst time was working for the Seven-Eleven on the corner of Ralston and Wadsworth in Arvada, CO after I had taught at CU Boulder. I have a poem about it in my new collection SEVEN. I was devastated and believed myself to be a failure. Our society deems success to be in what we "do" rather than who we "are." I still think my suffering in part was due to my going against the grain of where the universe wanted me to be. I wanted to teach and that drove me to remain in a field which is not where I belonged.

Part of being ill, is being willing to ask for help, to accept health, which is also frowned upon by our capitalistic-marketing-ownership-for-profit society. I am not equating poverty with being ill, but in my own case, illness is tied to ambition, career and "success."

This is not to say that people who are poor aren't doing what they are supposed to be doing, but it's more about an inner struggle to find peace where we are at. Also, as I write, I am working things out in my own head, but being a failure may just be the best thing that has ever happened to me (in terms of having a "career"). It's difficult because now when people ask me what I do, I may say something like "write" or "I'm taking time of from teaching to write" and so forth. This seems to unnerve some people in that I am not "doing something for money"--because money is what career is essentially about in our society. Going further I would say that money is what our society has become to be about. Who has it and who doesn't have it, but letting go of that desire for financial success can be such a relief it is unbelievable. I am blessed that I've been able to almost let go of these societal norms about making money. Poor but blessed.