Jellyroll

            On Saturday I opened up the new can of coconut milk and found that the contents didn’t act as coffee cream as well as the previous two tins, even though it was the exact same brand. It seems that with this batch the fat had separated, with the result that the coffee looked like I poured melted butter into it. It was very disappointing.

I finally finished my autobiographical poem, “Out On the Fields of Youth”. Of course these things can take years to really finish but since I have to submit twenty-one pages of poetry in a little over three weeks, I’d better move on and try starting some other stuff. I can always come back to tweak it later if there is time.

            I started trying to write my first ghazal. I focused on a single mood and then wrote down what came to mind about it in terms of different experiences. In a way it seems like poetic method acting. Then I organized the ideas into two line stanzas and structured them after the fashion of Phyllis Webb’s “Peacock Blue: An Anti Ghazal”, which George says is actually a ghazal, despite its title. The other ghazals I looked at for examples were those by John Thompson. When I went online though I discovered that there are very strict rules of word repetition and rhyme for ghazals that neither of those poets seem to follow.

            I watched an episode of Leave It To Beaver in which Wally got a “jelly roll” hairstyle. It was kind of like a greasy 50s precursor to the way that guy from A Flock of Seagulls wore his hair in the 80s. It actually looked pretty good but appeared like it would be a lot of work to maintain. Wally’s mother hated it but his father insisted that they let their son get tired of it. It was only when Beaver tried to go to school wearing the same do that June put her foot down and made them both stop embarrassing her. June Cleaver seemed pretty uptight.

It wasn’t until I was 12 that I finally rebelled against the brush cut my father always forced me to get. I needed to have hair like The Monkees.