254/365 - 255/365

254/365, originally uploaded by d_g_s.

01.22.11
Finding it hard to concentrate on poetry tonight. Words have lost a sense of structure. They have lost their language. Both recent issues Ploughshares and American Poetry Review leave traces of ash in my head. One or two poems will click, but the rest—

My cognitive skills are drained for the moment. Brendan kept crying for an hour and a half for no apparent reason, only to express his angst and nausea at the world.

Leaving me wanting to channel this negativity (his and mine) into something else. Lift out a small flourish out of a pile of ash, a pile of spent charcoal.

Turn a project into something definable. Paint out an image of a crow. Abstract it. Brush out a multitude of crows from your hair, a murder of crows circling.
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Poem for the moment:
peeling back layers of self
looking for the core.
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01.23.11
After a few more days of reflecting and binding together ideas, I found a common element existing between three various, unfinished projects— which can be merged into one.

.: Back in October I recorded in my physical notebooks alternative phrases—playing with word order and sentence structure—closing with the probable title:
"A Prayer Recital While Thinking of Crows"—
.: This apporpriately can merge with the want to create a memorial for Ruth; a project I have been waiting to respectfully approach...
.: Likewise I generated a brief listing of images— surreal dream-imagery which suits Ruth's own magic-realistic / unrealistic / avant garde style.

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Today ten dead ants
curl as punctuation marks
scattered in the tub—