"What to do with my life?"

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I LIVE MY LIFE

I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

--Rainer Maria Rilke (Transl. Robert Bly)

I love how thie poem below captures the truth of how many of us go through our lives, in an undulating rhythm of finding and then losing ourselves. Maybe that's how it should be. This feels timely too, as people newly free of their jobs may have the scary opportunity of stepping into something they've always wanted to do. I'm doing it. Anyone else?

The good fortune of getting a cold

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Yesterday I woke up with a sore throat and I was happy. First, it explained why I had been so low energy. Secondly, by grounding myself I got my Web site updated after letting it languish for a couple of years. I seem to be super productive when I work from bed. Reclining is so much better than sitting, and when I'm somewhere I'm not expected to do much, well, you know how that goes. Productivity city.

My brother, Michael, has been texting me everytime he goes skiing in his hometown of Colorado, outside Aspen. Last year we hiked the Aspen Highlands bowl and I put up a challenge for the time we would shoot for this year. He's taken it to heart and has crushed the original goal. I've never seen him this physically inspired! I'm usually the one in better shape, but I'm going to be hurting this March. The picture here is of us at the top of the bowl last March 2008.

In response to "Untitled" work

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TITLED

Be mine you sweet filibuster

I have almost finished blooming--yet
skimming my pores is this dirt, it pirates my viens, and I lie about

my colors: hazel is true, blond is false and so
I fall from the roof tops the firemen come

with their biceps and duct tape
putting me together again we all pretend as

everywhere the atmosphere blows into our heads
it lifts up our bed sheets, presses into our skin the dates of

our deaths, firings, heartbreaks. Let’s thank god
we can forget how our grandmothers once sang to us--

and you. You are like everything pointing that finger against
the street obstructing the center line

as I stand here sleeveless
petting the dahlias.

Good Girl, Bad Alchemy

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My first chapbook of poems, a story in verse, is here. Thanks Darwin Yamamoto for the great over art. An exerpt from the first page:

GOOD GIRL

Fiery plume, you picked me up
on your bike in the shadows of a school night.
I tasted your blood line—bad alchemy,
now it’s in me, un-traceable flavor.

A burst, a bruise inside my thigh by morning,
I made my sister pop it, I made her lie;
finished my homework on the bathroom floor,
Mom yelled over the pop of burnt toast, “Cla-a-a-ire”

Mom yelled my name, I was burnt toast;
Dad strode down the hall, rapped on the door,
“Get out here, Tramp.” I should’ve been scared,
but I was love-wounded, limping, with unfinished homework.

A whoosh in my heart, the ocean backed up,
the sink overflowed, splashing my papers.
Lisa’s parrot squawked: “Bruise, a bloody bruise!”
Mom shouted “I will not play Antigone again!”