Now Playing: “Dream a Little Dream of Me”
(Yes, I sang it last night. All heart, zero shame.)

Reporting live from the bunker where the Busted Poetry Vending Machine sits flickering, refusing to dispense anything but metaphorical lint and fragments of verse. Word Raccoon’s tried shaking it, threatening it with a ballpoint pen, and bribing it with barbecue chips. Still, it sputters. Still, we write. (Hey, someone’s got to poem. If not you, me. We can’t just say the machine is out of order, no more poetry. That’s not how this goes. Want me to stop writing these posts? Then write a damn poem!! And give me the proofs.)

The real reason I’m writing is: My website? Mid-makeover. Mid-meltdown. Mid-takeover by a certain trash panda. You might see rogue formatting or a raccoon in a tutu where the menu used to be. Don’t panic. I’m choosing chaos to make things prettier. Hopefully within the next week or two, all will be polished—or at least mildly coherent. I’m having header issues over here and deciding on a new…everything. Every time I’ve got it figured out, I…don’t.

Meanwhile, poetry refuses to stop – I’m thinking I am getting your share from the pipeline. It’s pouring out. Storm-drenched. Jagged. A little hungry. A little flirty, and I’m here for it.

I wrote about spiders today (one lived, one didn’t—guilt remains). Maybe yesterday I wrote the sandwich sharing poem, called Squirreling, or was it the escape room one with alligators in which I name the things my anxiety has made my husband promise not to do although I don’t think any sane human would do any of them, and another poem called dangerous flirtations with intelligent men (that can’t be a title, can it, Word Raccoon?)

There was opera and arias in one with a punny name though I am still pun resistant. One called Ambition Meets Midwest, although I’m toying with calling it Ambition VS. Midwest. I believe Target was referenced in it. Probably corn casserole. Definitely sugar cream pie, anyway.

I wrote of parade floats passing one another and tried to make it sound sad. Of Silvia Plath. Of cabbages and kings.

Also, my husband shared a thrifted Jackie Gleason album with me and you guessed it – poem. Feminist. Pissed at the title: Songs to Make Her Change Her Mind. Say WHAT?

So yes, I sang “Dream a Little Dream” last night, Mama Cass style. Word Raccoon clapped. Probably sarcastically. But I choose to believe it was sincere.

Now, Beatles gifts and more distributed,  I (Word Raccoon is decidedly NOT WELCOME) am going to take the birthday boy out for breakfast. In which I will get my pancakes. (Win/win?)

Don’t tell him, but I wrote a damn poem this morning before he woke up. And I have a couple more lines for the notebook to drill at later.

Did I mention I’m on my third chapbook, Character Witness: (subtitle something about the Word Raccoon.) Hey, my brand of poetry blends the ridiculous and truth. Sorry if it’s not all Song of Myself. Though dammit, what poetry isn’t? And I remember back in the day in class saying that title was masturbatory. (Am I wrong? And if memory serves, it’s so in multiple ways.)

I might sound as if I’m taking this all lightly, poetry, but that’s anything but the truth. I’m on fire, I’m seeing the world and translating it. I’m humming, and it feels great. Except when it doesn’t. Sometimes embracing this means looking deeply at things that still sting, at longing deeper than the grand canyon. (Hey, that’s a cliché, Word Racoon. Dive deeper.) Deeper than the Mariana Trench? Is that better, Word Mom?

Oh god. Is Word Raccoon answering in my blog post? She really is taking over the blog, isn’t she? May she be merciful and semi discreet.

Before I started choosing poems for submission the other day, I was concerned my poetry might be too fluffy. Ha! I started re-reading it. It. Is. Not. Fluffy. It is SHARP and pointed and full of truth and longing and those moments that might mean nothing to anyone else but that were landmark moments and things I’ve noticed that I just think ought to be. By someone.

I’m on the porch.
I’m writing.
I’m saving sandwiches and poems and sandwiches in poems. And, until you show up and take your best pen back, your poetry. (Psst…I’m not giving it back. But I’ll share.)

Dream a little dream of me. I am.

Wink.