Discovery Day

I found these pictures and lots of others on deviantART.com. It's a fantastic website with amazing photographs that are added daily. I went to try to find a picture to start my poetry project, but I found so many that I think I can decorate the rest of our apartment with them. I've always loved using photographs as inspiration for my writing. All of my poetry came from pictures at the Beach Museum, or the Strecker-Nelson gallery in Manhattan. It makes me want to actually do something with my camera, and make the photos more personal, but then I think that maybe my talent lies in writing something based on a photographer's vision. Who knows. I could just be lazy. But it's been a wonderful day, roaming around the many pages of deviantART. If you get some time, I suggest checking it out.

Also today I finally customized my homepage. I know, quite productive. The good news is that I'm plugged into a poetry network so I can get fresh ideas and poems each day, just by opening Mozilla. The internet is beautiful. I liked this one quite a bit. It's how I've been feeling lately.

Blues- Elizabeth Alexander

I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world. I sleep during
the day when I want to, ’til
my face is creased and swollen,
’til my lips are dry and hot. I
eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch, butter and sour cream
on my baked potato, foods that
slothful people eat, that turn
yellow and opaque beneath the skin.
Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown, the one
with the lace trim listing because
I have not mended it. Many days
I do not exercise, only
consider it, then rub my curdy
belly and lie down. Even
my poems are lazy. I use
syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go
for pages. And yesterday,
for example, I did not work at all!
I got in my car and I drove
to factory outlet stores, purchased
stockings and panties and socks
with my father’s money.
To think, in childhood I missed only
one day of school per year. I went
to ballet class four days a week
at four-forty-five and on
Saturdays, beginning always
with plie, ending with curtsy.
To think, I knew only industry,
the industry of my race
and of immigrants, the radio
tuned always to the station
that said, Line up your summer
job months in advance. Work hard
and do not shame your family,
who worked hard to give you what you have.
There is no sin but sloth. Burn
to a wick and keep moving.
I avoided sleep for years,
up at night replaying
evening news stories about
nearby jailbreaks, fat people
who ate fried chicken and woke up
dead. In sleep I am looking
for poems in the shape of open
V’s of birds flying in formation,
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.