turns out that i use the word 'lovely' a lot. at the wantling reading i read a very short poem and said 'isn't that lovely'? without irony and during the course of the evening it was pointed out how often i used the word.

but why not, indeed. today is a lovely day. warm, clear, sunny, without a cloud in the sky. we just got back from the park where nicholas fed the ducks, rode the swing and played with his shovels to the point of wearing himself out. now he's down for a nap.

the wantling reading was fantastic. caught up with some good friends i'd not seen in a long time. the readers all read the wantling poems i think beautifully. it was an intimate affair where we all sat around a table and read, joked and told wantling stories.

i suppose the blog format begets an intimacy of expression. in other words, it's almost impossible not to be autobiographical. i suppose that is both good and bad in a way. however, i love it when poets i admire write about their personal lives. because poems are made by people and at leat this person, me, if i find the poems fascinating i'll also want to read what the poet thinks and feels about everything and anything.

which is a long way of saying that in my own personal universe i can't help but write about this life of mine. for good and bad. at the moment i'm feeling tremendous stress because of my recent illness. blood tests have come back with elevated liver enzymes which are indicators of liver damage. i've had two sets of independent tests in the past two weeks with the same results. the causes are of course myriad and my doctor told me that it could be from a fatty liver which is due to my weight. i'm 6 ft and weigh now 213. that is down from 222 lbs two weeks ago. i'm trying to get down to 200 lbs. who knows the causes but i'll tell you the internet is a source of anxiety for looking up my results leads to all kinds of sites with all kinds of dire causes.

yet, except for my allergies getting medieval on my ass i feel my normal self again. my energy level is up and i no longer have fevers or headaches. i don't know. but my travails remind me of a few lines by sf poet duncan mcnaughton:

Last night was a long one in the ER.
I couldn't move for the cables attached
to my body. Doctor Wong gave me
an aspirin. Death is not optional, he
said, as if his exasperations
were supposed to be important to me.
Later, when I asked him if that was something
he thought about a lot, he ran away.
ER docs have short attention spans. This one
wanted to bully a poet. An old frightened
poet with a tough pain in his chest.
A poet, as he is one, is a poor man.
Like the Egyptian fellah said, Our
lives are the cheapest in the world.

['It Felt' from bounce; first intensity press, 2006]