Zelda's returns to the Daily Grind this week. As this move prompts us to consider what we're about, tonight's exercise was write about your creative process, with an emphasis on Zelda's

the rain falls in to the harbor
I watch it through the windows of the sushi restaurant, sipping a beer as I wait for my food

there is a moment here, seeing water return home
a moment I would photograph if I could image the inside of my mind
I cannot
so I write instead

so I write instead but
it's not enough, sometimes

A little haiku I wrote before Zelda's:

rain falling
into the harbor -
water coming home

With my workshop at the Well this Friday, May 16, I'll be launching a new venture: Warrior Poet Consulting. Under that brand I plan to provide workshops and other training and coaching to help people develop their creativity and cultivate personal excellence.

We'll see how it goes. Still trying to figure out step 2 of the business plan:

1. Relentless self-promotion.
2. ?
3. Profit!

Our good friend Brian Jefferson posted something on his MySpace Blog that meshed with some recent thoughts of mine. This is a slightly edited version of what I posted there in response, a few typos fixed.

I've been thinking about this a little bit, since the Obama speech a few weeks ago.

George Carlin said, about the end of slavery, "So we freed the slaves. But not so you'd really notice, just sort of on paper." A lot of people say that the end of slavery was a long time ago and we ought to put it behind us, but the problem was that it didn't just end. It changed into Jim Crow.

And that stayed with us long enough that it was only in 1967 that the Loving case overturned miscegenation laws - and they were still on the books in Alabama until 2000. And 40% of people voted to keep them!

Overheard today: "I can create a lot of confusion with very little effort." - Bob Pyle

Tonight exercise was to write a haiku, then pass it to someone else who would write a response

my haiku:

spring will not stop!
the relentless greening --
you cannot argue

Jesse's haiku, that I received:

From the window, grass
is uniform until splash,
the rabbit spreads

have you ever seen rabbits dance?
I have.

on a lazy late spring day
with the buzzing of the bees already taking on a lazy summer tone

from the window I see
one rabbit run out of the woods
stop in the middle of the lawn

writing exercise: write about a dream that was about self-discovery, where you (in the dream, or in later analysis), learned about yourself.

post and lintel architecture reminds me of her
that's the way they built before they invented the arch
posts on either side of an opening with a crossbar up top
and that's what happens when you fall in love with an intellectual
the abstract notions you discussed while snuggled up on the couch
become emotional triggers

Went to the anniversary party for PoetryInBaltimore.com earlier...now hanging out at Joe Squared across the street. There was a woman at the reading who remembered me from poetry night at the Bohemian, must be a dozen years ago, I think she was a teenager at the time. Ah, memories.

writing exercise from the phrase "precariously balanced"

I am standing on a basketball
just to see if I can do it
balancing for one or two or five seconds before I reach out to the wall to steady myself

slowly I shift weight to one leg, lift the other, let go of the wall
manage to hold for a second or two

from here I could fall in any direction
front back left right
but
from here I could move any direction

In a speech to a meeting of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, Hillary Clinton compared herself to Rocky Balboa, the hero of the Rocky movies. "Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up. And neither do the American people," said Clinton.

She seems to have forgotten that at the end of Rocky, Balboa lost the fight. (To the black guy, no less.)

Now, if Clinton needed to prove something to herself, the way Rocky Balboa did, that'd be fine - but it would be pretty sad if a U.S. Senator had such self-doubt, felt a need to prove herself by stepping into the ring with the champ. It would pretty much prove the point that she got where she is by riding Bill's coattails rather than on her own merits.

(BTW, as silly as some of the sequels got, the original Rocky is a damn fine movie.)