to myainsel,ted_badger,rainbows27,and theryk for coming out to the feature at Jester’s last night.

It was nice to actually have an audience…and seriously, the fact that people who see me all the friggin time would come an hour out of their way for the gig was moving on a day when I needed it.

Thanks. Thanks, especially, to myainsel, a damn fine riding-shotgun kinda companion. Good conversation out and back.

I did a set of almost entirely new stuff with a few ancient pieces thrown in by request, including “Penitent,” “Balboa Harbor”, “Magellan Song”, and closing with “As Slow As Possible.”

New poems included “Pottery,” the cheery family poems “Reptile Son” and “Sing Before Seven,” “Meta” (rapidly becoming a good new opener), “FireBoy,” “Kiss in a Chicago Garage,” and the tsunami poem, which I think goes beyond topical to something more lasting…not sure yet.

Did I do anything else? I don’t recall. They’re mostly ones online here, if you’re interested.

I’m actively trying to transition the set out of “slam mode” where I depend on the old stuff to wow a crowd. Eventually I’ll blend these into the mix — but it was nice last night to just let it hang out and go with this new stuff…because I think I need to.

A lot of it is more personal than I let myself speak of. Me, the guy who prides himself on “it’s all creative writing, don’t look for the literal me in there.”

Well…the literal me may not be, but there’s a lot more of who I am hanging out there than I like to admit to myself.

The sunset through the lake trees like
a breaking mandolin. Bright shards
thrown off at crazy angles. Its snapped music heard
all at once, not in sequence, not
as melody. Light’s
often like that here. There’s no song to it, just
a long day’s decay.

Trying to remember you —
you played the mandolin, or the guitar;
there was some instrument. Something
shapely. We sat on the dock
and pretended to be hovering
above the water on our own. Trees darkened
across the lake and all the swallows
came out to feed. Night time, final songs,
the last note of the strings banged too roughly
into the case.

Sunset these days, everyday, an instrument
of no music. A sound on the wrong edge of lovely.
A blank look on the lake’s face.
One swallow. One cricket. No moon.

A man who should go down to the water to play
but instead sits on shore,
not moving, tone-deaf and dry.

Thanks to all of you for the feedback on whether or not you think I’m arrogant.
(And hey, keep it up If you’ve got more.)

As I said, I don’t believe I am; but that being one of the criteria for arrogance, I figured I’d better check it out.

I got asked, backchannel, whether something specific drove this query.

The short answer is “yes”. The longer answer is “of course”.

Seriously…I guess I don’t feel like I trust myself to know myself. I think I do stuff that’s clearly understandable, at least from my viewpoint; but I don’t think I fully understand my impact on people.

Now, in regard to arrogance — I don’t think I’ll be likely to change much of that behavior; but I ought to know what it may do to people, and understand how that may work against my own self interest at times.

There are other things that I think I need to be more upfront about with folks.

I talk an awful lot about my mental health for instance; at least in part I do this because I am tired of society NOT talking about mental health issues in any sort of a reasonable and productive way. I figure familiarity breeds more comfort.

But now I think I may discuss meds and therapy and depression too often for the effect to be valuable. I think I come off as whiny, or self-serving; too much the victim.

I have been thinking that I may just move into a straight poetry-only mode here on LJ; I think I trust poetry more than I trust my ability to speak of myself.

For someone who’s said all his life that he was a creative writer not limited by his own experiences, not doomed to telling facts and facts alone, I find myself in the awful quandary of feeling that I have no inner life to speak of outside of my poetry.

I am somewhere in there, and I can’t see me. Frankly, I am a little scared by that.

Thus, the feedback request: what am I doing that doesn’t help me be connected to others? That’s all. Just looking for a lifeline. Someplace to stand and throw from.