I was dreaming about working on a ghazal when my alarm went off and I
lurched out of bed. I felt more tired than usual when I started yoga and didn’t
realize why until I began song practice while facing the sky. It dawned on me
that dawn was arriving later than it was supposed to because of the stupid
change to fake time. Boy the population was dumb to have allowed the government
to impose such a pointless thing on it all of those many years ago. We really should just stay with normal time.
The time change must
have hit me harder than I’d thought. My early afternoon siesta almost always
lasts for an hour and a half but this time my body grabbed an extra two hours
of sleep. I can understand it taking an extra hour because it lost an hour, but
two hours is just plain thievery!
I finished writing my
first ghazal after running through it and putting it into more poetic language.
I sent it to George Elliot Clarke to find out if I’d managed to actually write
a ghazal, since it doesn’t fit with the online instructions that are specified
on every site that promotes the form. Here’s what I sent him:
Drawn by distance. Our history.
Her star that fell from me. I turn away.
Laughter in the street outside,
the bells of a religion that isn’t mine.
I’m afraid of your happiness
but that doesn’t make you a terrorist.
A tenemental low-rise in this
unsentimental suburb of Christmas.
Exiled to an ache in the chest,
encrusted adolescent loneliness.
Not unpleasantly up river,
took a selfie in an angst-warm prison.
Facebook, I need to know who likes me.
Who’s charmed by my sensib-reflective enlightning?
The melanco-satisfied blues.
through a music-less moment blows a bruise.
I turn around.
I guess George, for the
first time in a long time, was not out jet setting when I sent the email,
because he got back to me fairly quickly.
He said, “Not bad at
all. But wasn’t sure around the middle that the “mood” was holding. Maybe the
images need to be unmuddled perfectly?”
He seemed to be
affirming that I was in the ghazal ballpark, but I wrote him back that I didn’t
understand his comment about unmuddling the images perfectly.
He answered back for me
to look again and to seek clarity.
Upon reflection, all I
could see, I told George, was that I should drop the “Facebook” stanza.
His final comment was,
“Go with gut.” so I did:
Satis-worried Blues
Drawn by distance. Our history.
Her star that fell from me. I turn away.
Laughter in the street outside,
the bells of a religion that is not mine.
I’m afraid of your happiness
but that doesn’t make you a terrorist.
A tenemental low-rise in this
unsentimental suburb of Christmas.
Exiled to an ache in the chest,
encrusted adolescent loneliness.
Not unpleasantly up river,
took a selfie in an angst-warm prison.
The melanco-satisfied blues.
through a music-less moment blows a bruise.
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