Last nite, I was exhausted but knew I had to work on a new short story. BTW, this woman is not me, but she's sleeping on my couch.
Why must I write? B/c I had an audience. Four people who would read and critique my short story the very next day.
The hour was getting late.
How do I procrastinate? Let me count the ways.
New York Times, Times videos, staring out the window, Facebook.
Ah, I'll brew myself some tea. My sister Donna, the connoisseur of the Western world, was over yesterday and told me she thought my Bigelow teas were WEAK.
Falling under her influence as I often do - she has an outsized personality - I decided to brew some jasmine tea.
What's a little cafffeine gonna do to me?
I'll be perfectly frank. Within a hour, I was positively hypomanic!
I had no trouble writing the story. It practically wrote itself. I couldn't have been happier. The whole thing took about three hours - unprecedented - and I thot this story is superb, worthy of being published in a great literary journal.
Bullshit!
That was the hypomania talking.Bullshit!
I print out the story, staple the 14 double-spaced pages, and tuck it in next to me on my bed full of books and New Yorkers.
And fall into blissful sleep.
And fall into blissful sleep.
I awake at 7, fix up the story and mail it to the Writers' Group. The object is to give em enuf time to read it before the meeting.
I should mention my sugar was 185 when I got there from the peach cobbler, knowing it would gradually decrease and I didn't need to eat anything while there.
- Was the rape scene realistic?
- Was it believable that her painting was "as powerful a piece of madness and despair as Monck's 'The Scream.'"
- Was it believable when she got the courage to cuss out the rapist?
Since our group now meets once a week, the 'deadline pressure' allows us to write more.
Linda Barrett read us another chapter in 'A Time for Love,' a science fiction novella where age requirements mandate an early death for everyone, on this overcrowded planet hundreds of years in the future.
Linda had her poem "The Bipolar Sea" printed on her T-shirt by Artistic Screen Design, who made our Mental Health Awareness Magnet. Her poem was published in last year's Compass.
Discounted copies available for this collector's item for $100 in the trunk of my car.
Laffin' Carly surprised us all by writing "A Short Essay about The Late Miss Virginia Woolf."
It was followed by a poem where a wife of 22 years questions if she still wants to remain married.
Allan Heller left us in terrible suspense after reading only three pages of his ghost story "Nothin' Strange Going On."
When someone gives Allan a suggestion, he sez: Duly noted.
He gave us all some websites on which to try to get our stories and poems published.
Look! Here's his story "Stones in a Creek."
90 percent of the time, said Allan, his work is rejected.
But, hallelujah, baby, it's the other 10 percent that counts.
The clock was ticking and I still hadn't written any poems this morning.
After procrastinating, I had 50 minutes left to write the poems.
I had five ideas and wrote about four of em.
Ahem, let the reading begin.
Discounted copies available for this collector's item for $100 in the trunk of my car.
Laffin' Carly surprised us all by writing "A Short Essay about The Late Miss Virginia Woolf."
It was followed by a poem where a wife of 22 years questions if she still wants to remain married.
When someone gives Allan a suggestion, he sez: Duly noted.
He gave us all some websites on which to try to get our stories and poems published.
Look! Here's his story "Stones in a Creek."
90 percent of the time, said Allan, his work is rejected.
But, hallelujah, baby, it's the other 10 percent that counts.
The clock was ticking and I still hadn't written any poems this morning.After procrastinating, I had 50 minutes left to write the poems.
I had five ideas and wrote about four of em.
Ahem, let the reading begin.
LEMON FUSION
On
one of those cooking shows
where
they do the impossible
and
make you go downstairs
in the middle of the night
to root like a rabbit
in
your refrigerator
a
sensible-looking man
held
up a lemon
an
ordinary yellow lemon
and
cut it to shreds
enclosed
it in a glass jar
with salt, sugar and
vinegar
"Put
it in a dark place," he said
looking at me as I rode my
stationery bike
"The
chemicals will do their job
Reactions
will begin immediately
In
half a year your lemon will be
like
custard, more delicious than
your
palate ever dreamed"
Inside,
the explosions begin
one
small cell thrown up in the
air
like a juggler tossing
bowling
pins in a circus tent
the
glass sides sprout designs
like
a Picasso
noisily,
though there’s no one
to
hear it,
the
center blows apart
a
Krakatoa having nowhere to
go,
caught in a glass womb,
with an ear-splitting rumble.
So,
too, five billion years ago,
the
earth was formed, chained
to Mother Sun
Our lemon must wait in fetal darkness
and await and explosions yet to
come,
before she, too, is released,
a
captive chrysalis reborn to
life
as a dessert
fit for the
discerning
palate.
MY SHORE HOUSE
Long Beach Island
Cape May
Ocean City
A
perquisite of modern life
is
a visitation at what is known
as
a “shore point”
let
the sand blow in your face
the
ocean lick your wounds clean
and
the shells offer you a glimpse
of death made beautiful
of death made beautiful
I
defer.
My
house is my shore house.
Devoid,
now, of children or pets,
I
roam around these sweltering days
of
August
The
screened-in back porch is where
I
take my meals
Meow!
says the new stray cat
my
daughter-in-law would
instantly
bring home
Scat!
I call as he peeks
in the screen door
and
rushes off under the
unkempt
forsythia
I
lay down in my reading room
windows
cranked open to allow
the
halting breeze to find me,
snap
on the fan and
pick up Nelson deMille about
spies in Russia but
spies in Russia but
after
two frightening chapters
I switch to the New Yorker
I switch to the New Yorker
teetering in two unread stacks
like a collapsible Eiffel Tower
on the carpeted floor.
like a collapsible Eiffel Tower
on the carpeted floor.
Too
many choices for bedtime.
What
kind of night will it be?
A
tough one requires the soft living
room
couch and a movie on the laptop
Otherwise,
unencumbered by sand
in
my eyes or the smell of salt water
clinging
to my face
I
catapault myself into bed
it’s
one of those high ones
Princess and the Pea style
sold only at Sleepy's
After a dozen false starts
sleep finally snatches me in its
huge butterfly net.
sold only at Sleepy's
After a dozen false starts
sleep finally snatches me in its
huge butterfly net.
AT THE FEET OF THE
MASTER
I
was fat then
with
my lithium thighs
and
double chin
put
on my best
fat
clothes and drove over
to
meet him in the lobby
of
the mental health facility
where
I counseled people
sicker
than I.
Under
my arm was
a
manila folder I’d
stolen
from the agency
filled
with dozens of my poems
When the Hummingbird Hums
Neighbors
Houses on the Corner
waiting
for a poet famous in our town
I
nodded to the new janitor in the lobby
decked
out in white longjohn shirt
and
huge glasses revealing owl eyes
that
bored through my head
Walked
over to the window to see if
he
was pulling in.
Seven
a.m. he said was the only time
he
could come
Illicit
lovers, I thought, turning back
to
the janitor, tall legs ensconced in jeans
our eyes meeting in understanding
I
tapped my folder and opened it up
he
grabbed it eagerly
my
Homer, my Ovid
"I'll look 'em over," he said
in his professorial voice,
"and mail them back."
I
watched him mount his truck in
the
parking lot.
When they came back they
were filled with stars and ex-
clamation points.
A
poet famous in our town.
Chris Bursk, PhD, born 1943. Read more here.
