Failed Experiment; Thanks for the Comments

I don't know if I mentioned that I ran out of Lamictal for a few days this week, and I noticed one new symptom in its absence--a feeling of disgruntlement, a superficial dissatisfaction with every activity undertaken--from television shows to newspaper articles, from playing the guitar to weeding, as if whatever you do you'rre condemned to disike it in your pessimistically impatient state of mind, always looking for something else. As soon as I re-started the Lamictal this symptom disappeared. That's how I knew it was a symptom.

I promised to update my blog tonight at 9 PM tonight and comment on the experiment. Unfortunately I have nothing to report. Why?

My blog's formatting looked horrible, scrunched to the left. So I ditched everything and re-formatted it, losing my links, including stat tracking, though thankfully the comments remain. I've checked other blogspot blogs and they appear fine. But the layout of my blog on my computer looks awful, with no margins and text not aligned with marginalia.

I've also been locked out of my main e-mail address by Big Brother MicroSquish as well. For my own good. Because their Outlook Express program tried to sign in too many times to their Hotmail program.

Microsoft is so complicated now that it's developing inflammatory diseases, where the software interferes with itself much like rheumtoid arthritis, where one protective antibody attacks another and your joints swell up.

As I noted above, the stat program was deleted so I don't know the traffic anymore and have only the comments to go by. And I'm much encouraged by those who said they came for the poetry, and especially the soul that called my poetry "powerful,' the quality I most seek.

After 51 years of doing everything from selling Fuller Brush to brain surgery, I've admitted that I'm first a poet. Saying that always gives me a shiver of inferiority, as if my art were of no account, by no means as important as selling insurance or digging ditches. But I can't help myself. I yam what I yam. .

Getting out of the way of the poem, that's the secret... discovering how the words of the intial draft want to be arranged. Even speaking in the first person you must dissociate yourself from the poem as your creation simply to analyze its relative merits. Much you will find tangential on second glance, maybe your best lines. You must delete them if they don't advance the poem, else you love yourself and your voice more than poetry. There are many temptations that look like poetry when in fact they are not. Be merciless with your most cherished lines if they stand in the way of the poem.

How I prattle and preach! Like an authority in search of a subject...


Poem below.


Thine at 1 kilorat,

CE

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This poem is nearly 20 years old but I was never satisfied with it so I recently revised it while sorting my poetry files.


Lunar Dip

Like a flattened pearl a white shell weights my palm.
Bubbles coalesce and merge between my toes.

Humped like buffaloes, sand crabs burrow,
trailing Vs in the gray glaze like sticks in a stream.

Ankle-deep water chills me, my calves stiffen as curling mirrors
of waves shatter against my chest into cold bright foam.

The moon’s reflection on the dark water stretches out
like a roll of silver dollars spilled. Swim to the last coin.