Still struggling with finding inspiration, making me realize again what a great tool it is to have a source of daily writings to respond with. I admit sometimes wondering why I continue but the practice eventually has its benefits as daily writing becomes a part of every day routine. Or at least, that is my intention.

Small Stones for January 22 through 28, 2016

Jan. 22 2016

Weekly I vow to tidy up my office, sort papers,
file it all, making room for those projects that are active
and the ones still forming in my mind, I promise

Carol’s Desk

my desktop will be clear, pristine, holding only
the one file I’m working on at the moment. And,
to sort through my baskets, downsizing, excavating,

new archaeological digs for the treasure of forgotten poems.
I will spray them, and polish them, put them up for adoption,
submitting or uniting them in a marriage of manuscript.

But each week, in the evenings, after lights out, after bedtime,
the imps and the gremlins tiptoe softly to the study, slyly open
every drawer, and pull it all back out again, creating chaos once more.

Jan. 23 2016

Tojo makes a nest in my workbag

There is a furry demon who lives inside my house.
He’s an excavator, an inquisitor, always got to know
what lurks inside the waste bin, what lies behind a door,
what’s under the green blanket, when he pulls it to the floor.

Paper on the table is a toy for him to dance,
he pulls it one way, then the other, as if in a trance
the movement soothes some torment, relieves boredom,
stuff like that. He’s a demon, that Tojo, my Siamese cat.

Jan. 24 2016

Some days there are no voices
but my own. Sunday and the world is remote
in its cold white, but here, just the cat and I
He with his own pursuits: sleep, eat, chase shadows
while I keep company with white pages, hoping
that words will come from within to populate
the blank screen like a giant eye with its white glare

TOJO

And the cat discovers his other game, to create
a cat-shaped hole in the face of such white glowering
and he will sit there, blocking menus, hiding icons until

the music starts or voices raise from the speakers
It hurts his ears or wounds his pride, or perhaps his dignified
pose as porcelain cat, and he exits, stage right, tail flourishing.

Jan. 25 2016

the therapist kneads and prods the places
in my back, asking if it hurts, and where it wasn’t,
it surely is as she pokes her fingers deep into the knots
in muscles, stiff and tight from sitting too long
not working on those stretches and extensions

Jan. 26 2016

I plan each morning to spend time at keyboard
immersed in new poems or
fine-tuning the old, carving the crispness
into each line, or carving out the flab
of wording that takes the long way round.

Instead, I bog down early in the Ethernet gab
the flow of spam, phishing, and all those newsletters
I had to sign up for, so interesting did they seem
at the time, but now just another way
to procrastinate and postpone that moment when
another day begins with not much to say.

Jan. 27 2016

Languishing on desk top, a book of days,
and one of writing dangerous things an entire year
become paperweights that bow down the inbasket
its sturdy plastic not quite up to the chore
of supporting files on workshops, files of poems for rewrite,
a calendar, an empty notebook, and all of my intentions.

Jan. 28 2016

Last day of the fourth week of January
another week of Small Stones, each week in its own
figurative cairn, each Stone stacked carefully
on the growing pile of ruminations on
the day-to-day inconsequential, small confessions
of the large intentions that fizzle into little progress
but lit here and there the occasional flash
of self-insight, small breakthroughs to spur the coming months.

CAS