First, a clarification on the last post.

The first two lines of it were pretty explicit (I thought) in making the point that I was NOT necessarily interested in getting more comments on my poems — that the feelings of fear and concern about getting fewer comments were ego-driven. Comments are welcome, of course, but I’m not going to lose my mind over this.

The overall point of the post is that I’m far more interested these days in writing STRICTLY for me — operative word “strictly” — not thinking of it necessarily as any sort of communication, but more a form of seeing how far I can take what I do. It’s a time for me to write STRICTLY for myself.

For every poem you see here, there are three or four more that I don’t post. I tend to post stuff here because I want to try it out, see what people say, as part of the writing process. I find I need that less right now.

Thanks for your comments, all of you. I feel like I came off as a whiner, and that was not my intent.

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now then:

Right now, I’m wired although I’m exhausted. I’ve spent my day in meetings, running a training session, and (most of all) hanging out at O’Hare Airport waiting to get home. Weather around the Midwest has produced a clusterfuck; the end result being that I’m sitting here in a hotel in Rosemont waiting for the next flight home, which will be at 4:20 tomorrow afternoon. (Yes, 4:20. I’ll leave it to all of you to have fun with that.)

My flight was delayed several times before being cancelled at around 7:45. Along with a lot of other people, I found myself sitting at the gate watching other people sitting at their gates.

As I sat, I saw a group of men approaching the gate across from me. All three were dragging rolling suitcases. Two were tall, young black men in fairly conservative sweatsuits.

The third was a short black guy wearing:

— a black tracksuit with gold trim
— a leather NASCAR jacket (Mark Martin, number 6, with the logo of his old sponsor — Viagra — on the back)
— honkin’ big rings on every finger
— one gold chain
— white sunglasses
— a yellow do-rag and a bigass gold crown

And yes, a big white clock around his neck.

My first thought was, “who’s this joker trying to look like Flavor Flav?” And then I heard him talk…

Yup, it was Flav. He was catching a flight to Evansville Indiana to visit a cousin (the two guys with him were also cousins).

His flight was also delayed, so for the next several hours I got to watch the man work the crowd.

He’s obviously in love with his celebrity, but I have to say he seemed genuinely nice and friendly. As people realized who he was and that he was the real thing, kids and adults of all ages — and TONS of women — lined up to have their pictures taken with him. He signed autographs left and right and generally talked willingly and at length to any one who approached him.

I have to say that I was really impressed that he was schlepping his own luggage, and his cousins were also really cool; I ended up talking a bit about the weather and the flight delays with one of them.

At one point, I was hunting for a plug for my laptop and Flav was next to me on the phone talking to someone named “Delicious.” I heard him saying, “…baby, you know I’ll be down for you for the rest of my life, no matter what shit happens, you my girl no matter what.” I think she’s the woman he chose on the show, yes? I’ve only seen it once or twice.

I have a rule about not bugging celebrities in airports, so I didn’t speak to him myself, although I did wave hi and smile as I left the place where he was talking on the phone and got a smile and nod in return. In retrospect, I should have said something to him about how much I loved Public Enemy, but I’m not sure how it would have gone over, so it’s probably for the best.

They eventually moved his flight to another gate, and the gate attendant broke the news by saying over the intercom, “All those travelling with Flavor Flav to Evansville, your flight will now be leaving from…”

And off everyone went, with Flav and his cousins in the middle of the throng, yakking it up with everyone.

The one bit I did contribute to the fun: people kept asking him what time it was (of course). One of them said it near me and I couldn’t help it — I said, “He wears the clock so YOU know what time it is…” I don’t think he got it.

Based on what I heard in the crowd, most everyone knew him from the show, and I don’t think many folks knew anything about PE.

Kinda sad.

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I need to sleep, but i’m still pretty wired, even after a shower. All I want is to get home.