bitten bottom lip

i haven't been going to the open mics any more often than i've been writing on my blog. i'm forced to examine whether or not all this writing was just a phase or if this current inactivity is a phase.

i've been writing all my life, it's just that some times have been more intense than others. ask my diary. i started my first volume in 1987. i don't think i've written in it since spring. ask my marble composition notebook. i haven't written a new poem in at least a month. but if you flip through either my poetry or my diary, you'll see that it wasn't always this way.

lately, i've been too busy living, or being tired from living, to write. i'm working at work, so that means no blogging from the job. i'm busy at home, trying to keep up with friends and family, trying to keep my house clean, my business straight, enjoying a relationship that any reader should have known was bound to happen to me...

i mean, did i talk it up? did i will this happiness to come to pass? or was this bound to happen, and somehow my intuition felt it coming? i suppose i'll never know, but in my piscean view of the world, i can't help but to think that it was a little bit of both - fate and longing burning at both ends of a string, meeting and exploding at just the right place and time. i feel like i've found a safe space in the world. a shelter from the winds of worry. a peaceful haven. and i'm truly happy - bubbling, smiling to myself with no explanation to curious passersby.

it's really nice, when i'm hitting my after-lunch-'itis-what-time-is-it-anyway slump in mid-afternoon, to have someone to think of - the thought of whom gives me just the boost i need to make it to the end of the workday. really, really, really nice.

a friend of mine warned me not to fall off just cause i got arms to fall into. he says it happens to all the lady poets. they get all hugged up, or married, or mothered, and then you don't see them anymore. the defiance in me wants to vehemently deny that this is what's going on with me. i actually have not been inspired to write poetry lately. blogs, yes - but not poetry. i'm tired of my own poetry. the few times i've been to open mics, i've flipped through my book, looking for something i felt led to share. but i keep getting frustrated by that exercise. none of it impresses me, and much of it fails to entertain me anymore. i don't think that it's because i'm used to it either - i think it's because i'm growing and changing, and the old pieces just don't speak to my present spirit. i think i need to elevate the quality of my writing, and frankly, being intimidated by that challenge is part of what's keeping me from writing new pieces. let me not forget that i haven't really been inspired much at the poetry venues in the few times i've gone in the last several months. have i seen it all? heard it all? in any case, i must admit, the arms i've fallen into are quite distracting. sometimes i feel like the best, most satisfying poems i've been writing lately are made not of words, but of the artful interaction between me and him. at this rate, i don't know when my poetry books will get new pieces scribbled inside them.

it might help to go on the internet more often to communicate through writing, in whatever form that may take. my myspace page is all but abandoned. my favorite message boards probably don't even remember me. my blog is really suffering. shoot, i'm barely even checking my email. i keep meaning to make more of an effort. then i keep slipping and losing ground...

it's not an easy place to be right now, wondering if i'm losing something really special.

but i'm trying to hold on.