Today, I am compelled to write....

At "And Now You Write" today I gave this prompt...Today I am compelled to write...

and the following is what came off my pen:

what's next, what is right in front of me. My cell phone, a tall cool drink, my glasses. Two textbooks, including one that wears tiny wire rimmed glasses and peers down a bumpy nose, sneering. Ugly.

At that observation, my pen surrenders. Gives up, stops being able to be used as it is normally used. as a pen.

I am unperturbed. I listen to smooth jazz and watch the woman next to me, her foot bouncing in its black hush puppy shoe. I finagle the pen so I hold only the thin ink reservoir and continue to write albeit precariously.

Never say there is not devotion present here.

Today I am compelled to write where I did go rather than where I didn't.

I recognize a favorite James Taylor song morphed into muzak. It frightens me, slightly. I heart ice clunking into a cup. No voice croons, "don't let me be lonely tonight" but I hear lyrics, longing, only heard inside my head.

I am compelled to write of legacy. What will I leave behind? Notebooks some would rather seen burned. I keep writing. I think of my photos and pray if I were to leave before October 31, someone would save my Flickr photos, all getting close to 10,000 or some outrageous number like that.

I keep writing. I will always, always, always keep writing.

I will buy stencil letters, Furniture. brooms, pages upon pages and turn frustrated junkmail into art. I will paint my chairs, turn them into art, sculpture, inspired places for sitting. I hear a long ago self-talk thread, "You'll never amount to anything" which if I admit it, I love hearing. I secretly love the romanticism of gauntlets being tossed at my feet. Maybe I was a knight's helper in a past life (if I believed in past lives) and loved the ceremony of it. The poetry of it. Tossing the gauntlet down, staring the opponent in the eyes.

Brad tossed a gauntlet at my feet, I rose 44 feet in the air in a monumental FUCK YOU to pick up the gauntlet and jauntily toss it over my shoulder.

Ginn tossed a gauntlet, "I invited you because you are such a great storyteller" and underneath that, between the lines of that, "You suck as a poet." I picked up that gauntlet and threw it so far and so long and so hard, there was no room on that stage for any other poets. Not for a long shot and then some extra shot or twelve or eighty seven.

"I know, I know, I know what you're thinking. I look like your Mom. Well, get ready to discover the things your mom, YES YOURS thinks about and perhaps, sometimes even writes poetry about when YOU are not looking."

I command a room, a page.

Before I committed suicide I called, was it, my Mom? I called my sister at some point, something I have hardly done since. We've never been back there since that time in 2001. Crazy. 9 years. I am compelled to write of grief and loss and creating family where there once was none.

I read "Sorry greets me at my front door."

I am compelled to write the confession, "I want to be someplace urban!" I want catalogs of grit and grime unsurpassed, unsupressed. Today, I will practice more. Gratefully woo myself.

And today, I am compelled to write drivel.

Yes, beloved, nonsensical, whimsical and at times what is the word? Sentimental drivel. Gonna make, some sentimental drivel...

Today I felt my belly, my ever strengthening core. Literally felt it with my left palm against my abdomen. It is getting tougher. It hurts well. Tomorrow it should hurt even more nicely after yoga. It hurts, in fact, just as I might hope.

Today I will write backgrounds. Paint backgrounds, add to my pile of stuff for Art Everyday month. I will allow myself to fritter away some moments, on purpose. Dangle my hand in the water, allowing myself to get cold and wet and continue to write, even when the pen is broken for any words, any words I write here are NOT broken. My words, my love, my vision is alive.

I am compelled, today, to write "I want my missing notebooks back!"

I read Susan Glaspell's name. She wrote plays.

I long for conversations with women. I long to connect women with their stories, going backward and moving forward, like Sam's query into whether or not I have written our story of "the scent of popcorn hung in the air."

Maybe that will be one of his Christmas presents!

I am compelled to write love. I am compelled, today, to write.

There are so many writing seedlets here. How grateful am I? So grateful.