Inner Life

...it's a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in bacon...mmmmmmm, bacon....

Hurricane Ivan spreads a silty blanket across the turgid sky, but we take the top down anyway. The air is heady in its dangerous warm wetness.

I fret at the long interval I've had between poems, but feel no guilt, since I take no responsibility for them. They strike me, then ask me to hone them. They seem to come from some place outside myself, and all I can do is wait until one comes calling.

Usually, at this time of year, I am awash in poetic image and rhythmic turn of phrase. Especially being sleep-deprived, as I have been lately. Three AM is not a normal bedtime, except for me, and I consider myself wandering into dangerous territory only when I settle in past four. There is something ironic about being up at three-fifteen reading Stephen King's Insomnia. Or maybe it's just sad.

My girlfriend of long-ago has nudged me into planning to attend our high-school reunion. I'm not saying which one, but it's big. The Animal says he likes to go to all of his reunions, in order to gloat at the fat, boring, unhappy people his ex-classmates have become. I don't care much either way. I've long outgrown being embarrassed about the freaky highschooler I was, since all my current friends were also freaks (too bad there's no magnet school for freaks, so we could all be together as youngsters rather than waiting to search one another out as adults) and still are, for that matter. We revel in it.

Tonight, sushi with BuddahPat, who less freaky than most of us (someone I know described a friend as being "worth ten of the rest of us." That's Pat, though he'd deny it) and I've been feeling deprived of his reassuring company.

That, and edamame. Mmmmmmm.