rain falling through filters

I really shouldn't be here at the moment, writing. As evidenced by the previous post, I have a whole host of things I really ought to be doing, but right now can't really bring myself to do any of them. My mind is wandering, and it's starting to feel like it's time to pay another visit to Meagunn's Island of Lost Toys...

I used to write a lot. I've still got my old notebook here, worn burgundy leather covered in dust, but I don't carry it everywhere like I used to. Poetry, mostly; my attempts at writing stories were like aborting mutations. Poetry had a less solid quality to it, which was perfect for the way my mind worked. Words skipped from one meaning to the next, and something simple could be expressed in the most complicated terms, or vice versa. Writing was my drug. It shaped me, but it's almost as if I've moved past that now. I don't know how you could; maybe it was really just a symptom of teenage angst. The "spoooky Gothik dark poetry" all about blood drops on rose petals, or something. Except I never really wrote like that. I did pay some attention to style, at least.

I don't know, it's strange when you look at the places you've been. There are so many directions I could have gone, but instead, here I am in Morgantown, slaving it out on a masochistic path to survival and redemption. I could just as easily have stayed in Seattle, in the mist with the beautiful junkies and gypsies. Or I could be in Lawrence, Kansas, in a studio loft somwhere studying art and photography, looking on at endless fields of grain. Or I could be in Ireland, granite and rain and smoky pubs, studying Victorian literature and theater and working at an Oxfam shop. But I'm here. And I don't really write anymore. I just think, passively, and every once in a while feel that old sense of wonder looking at weathered granite against a sunset. In a way, I've grown up. In a way, I'm an overgrown child. I don't know what to think of myself anymore, other than not to think. Existing should be enough.

Indulge me for a moment. Looking through my old shit, I found some stuff I still rather like, and this is my "unassuming feminist poem":

we were going to be waitresses
while our friends were dancers in Vegas;
they were the last drops of ambition
in this bitter brew.
the others drank it dry;
it was too strong for us.

Cindy would be a truck driver
when the bottle was still full
and all I wanted
was to climb trees
with skinned knees---
you decided who you were,
didn't you?
not a piece of skin
and coincidental organic chemistry,
grown up things
but instead it's torn down.
age makes them fat
and complacent with child,
but there is a secret still,
and it's marked the ones who've tapped it:
a spark in the eyes
and a sudden two-step in shoes
among those who've forgotten
how to dance---

age may turn us to penguin dust
taken as pleasure for the masses
but they cannot insist
the impossibility of flight;
the stage is ready
to be danced upon
and some have not forgotten.
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I don't know. I just started thinking...