I guess August sucked?

That's a lie. August was wonderful. So wonderful, that I forgot this thing existed. I don't want to bore you with the personal aspirations and successes or failures that the waning summer sent my way, just rest assured, faithful reader, little was done that afforded me the courtesy of a blog update. Funny how now as I sit in the wake of three of my four graduate classes and am completely winded by the extent of the work expected of me, I find the time to write down some rather meaningless dribble for the internet communities that might come across this. The seven or eight people who live at the center of the earth with their planet-core powered laptops just clicking away to the ends of the internet, they are my biggest fans.

So, Morlocks, what the fuck is up? I started school. It's more than I could have imagined. Last night we had our first workshop, just an introductory thing of course, no one had any work to shop, but still I was sitting there grinning my stupid face off all evening. We are a class of nine and we are awesome. I can't wait to read what these people write. Of us, there is another marathoner, an ex-Decaturian, a Pittsburgh native who says "Stillers" instead of "Steelers", and a baby Chicagoan fresh out of southern Cali who already claims this city as her home without experiencing a winter. Maybe presumptuous, but definitely admirable.

This week has been eye-opening. I don't want to discredit any friendships or conversations that I've ever had, but the things that I've said this week in discussion are things I have barely even thought about in years. It was so god damned refreshing to talk about poetry and education theory with other people who honestly just have the patience for that shit. I love Daniel and Robert, don't get me wrong, but they have barely read any of my poetry, much less engaged me in conversation about it. After workshop last night where we discussed an article on difficulty in poetry by Reginald Shepherd and a defense of MFA poetry programs by one of Columbia's faculty, my roommates and I dissected the word 'successfully' and turned it into 'suck-sex-fucking' in reference to how Daniel's recording session with one of our female friends went.

Who the fuck am I, really?

I feel like I'm betraying someone or something. Maybe it's really poetic and I'm just fooling myself. In reality I'm probably some Vegas diva hopped up on goofballs giving footjobs for stem cells in the back alley of an abortion clinic. Whatever. People have balanced more contradicting lifestyles before. My last relationship existed between two people who didn't even really exist and knew it. Everyone fools themselves constantly.

On that same note, in all these classes you go around and do your introductions and for some reason, I can never actually say anything interesting about myself. It's always after I mutter something about movies and video games that I realize I actually have some unique and intriguing things to say. All my classmates probably think I'm some turdy shade of gray at this point. I just don't get where my head goes when put on the spot like that. I can't say I'm a runner or a vegan or a musician or even a writer, and here I am stuck dead in an MFA program. Anyway, I just feel like a douche. I'm sure everyone will get to know me to a frustrating extent and all of this first-week goosebump bullshit will be far behind us.

I should hopefully be writing more. At least getting the shit I've been shitting shit on by other shits in an effort to make cleaner shit. Here's my prompt for this week:

"For next week, write a poem in which all events occur simultaneously. ("Events" may be internal as well as external; may be antidramatic as well as dramatic; may be thoughts instead of actions; and so on.)

The poem should include your 10 favorite words from Tender Buttons. Write these words at the top of the page so that we can re-experience them in your poem."

So many semi-colons.