Flight of the Muse

It's February.  The local contest is here.  I have nothing.  I'm empty.  AAAAARRRRRRGGGHHHHH.....

There's a piece I wrote earlier this year, and I think it's strong, but it's not ready yet.  It needs to tumble around in that rock polisher between my ears for awhile yet before I send it anywhere.

I wrote something about New Orleans, too, after I came back from my recent sojourn there, but it's a little on the dark side, a little eerie, and it's the most recent thing I have produced.  I need to work on it more than any of the others.  I'm going back to NOLA soon, too, and I want to see if I still feel the same about the poem and the city after this second trip there.  Travel always makes me write, and I was in such a whirl during that first trip that there wasn't any time to do more than get fleeting impressions.

There's a piece I started,felt strongly about, and shelved called "For the Girls" that was inspired by watching the interaction between my students, watching how mean they can be to each other sometimes when one of them doesn't quite fit the expected pattern or is a little different.  It, too, is too rough to send. It needs pruning, like a wild-growth shrub that sprang up too fast.  I wrote three pages worth of that one before I put it away for later.

I guess it's not true then, to say that I have nothing.  I guess it's more a problem that everything I have is weak and unfinished, like a string of houses the builder walked away from, windows gaping open, doors unhung.  I don't know whether or not to try to get something together or just to skip it this year.  I need my muse to descend and slap me around some so I can get something concretely polished.  Maybe a miracle will happen here in the next few days.