Well, Willie and Nancy are finally hitched. Congrats. 
I am happy for them. Their dedication, fortitude, and generosity toward one another and their friends is something rare and good in this world. I wish them many happinesses in their new adventure. There could have been more deserving people.
As for me--NO Authorial subterfuge this time--It is me talking for real--for once instead of the many stances or personas or perspectives I like to use (gee you know those renaissance people had the right idea with masquerades) as diverse as my collection of hand-made renaissance masks--I am exhausted. I get horrifically drained attending social events and being around so many "strangers." It's hard enough being on my best behavior, but then to make conversation--worse to the opposite sex. Frankly, it's harder than acting because I have to be genuine enough to not be fake and fake enough to not be TOO genuine. No, no, nobody wants too genuine. Nobody cares that much (Thank you Ray for caring enough to be real and allowing me to be at the after barbecue--I got tired of holding my "civil" & "happy" masks--I'm sorry to the others if they had to be exposed to the "Fuck off" sign on my forehead).
Well it is my birthday after all. And I feel as much like Bilbo Baggins does to the other Hobbits at his party. If only I had the One Ring. Then I could take myself to my own personal Mordor and brood about getting older instead of making one for everyone around me. But then, of course, if I had it I might just like making it hell for everyone around me. Not a good idea.
Anyway to capture the mood that my muse provided at the moment--which now after the long drive from Santa Barbara and a delicious nap have cured me of--I wrote a couple of rough poems (please don't be offended Nancy, I did warn you--just blame it on my insanity ):
Futility (1st draft)
And I a magistrate holding court
In pontificating self-importance
With books upon my table-bench,
And coldness in my eye;
Surveying, austere, the crashing waves
Presiding over the beach.
That's the tame one. Now for the hard one:
My Thirty-Second Birthday (2nd draft)
My friends hitched on yestereve.
The reception--overwhelming--
O happy cheer and joyous laughs,
The hallmark of their harsh travails.
And well deserved the toast and smiles
Those benchmarks of their love.
How they shine like mid-more suns,
Fresh reminders for me:
That such things are a dance removed
From the vacuum of my portion--
So I must take and break my fast
With Lenten memories:
To feast upon the litany of
Rejection and rejection,
To wear again my worn out masks
And face women's mocking smiles:
Wishing every breath I take
That I was an abortion.
Oh not a pleasant poem at all. Initially the "women's" was "those" and "theirs" but I didn't want it confused with my friends who got married--it wasn't about them--I like them. I changed it to "men's" but well, I undersand what male mocking looks like.
No no. The muse wanted something misogynistically fitting and shocking to attach to the last vile line about wishing to be an abortion. A fitting response to rejection as the complete desire to cut off any connection to the rejector and her gender--To the point of wishing to be aborted so to express the speaker's total desire to be cut off completely from the opposite gender to be purged of any relation to females in the grossest most violent and most inhumane and femininely destructive way possible: an abortion.
It certainly is more graphic than incomplete meiotic reproduction. Which frankly just doesn't capture the emotion of rejection and response to rejection as I wanted to capture.
An ugly piece overall. But ugly and grotesque are a specialties of a Juvenallian satirists like me. Imitation of Browning has always been something that I try at times. See the two of my favorite poems of his that captures the grotesque and the insane.
Hey remember don't confuse the writer with the speaker in the poems. The subject matter is familiar and based on reality but that's just the springboard in which I take my dive--and in this case off the deep end into a dry pool. I know Browning enough to know he was no wife killer--He loved his wife quite completely. They have to be my favorite poets--aside from Alexander Pope, Swift, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. Probably the most influential in my life at least second only to Shakespeare and, surprise to those who still think I'm a woman hater (actually I'm more misanthropic than anything else), Mary Leapor. She was the first poet that I seriously imitated after Shakespeare.
It's only recently that after I started teaching high school that I became interested in the grotesque--since teenagers are by far the most grotesque people (even caricatures of their favorite media people) I've ever met.
~Cheers
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