DAY 38: The Ladies Love A Poet.

Tonight my improv group had a show. For those of who have never seen us, or are unfamiliar with the world of long-form improvisation, to start off a show it is customary to get a suggestion (usually a random word) from the audience. The suggestion acts as a springboard, and it is used to inspire the beginnings of scenes. Each group uses their suggestion in a slightly different way. For my group, we get the suggestion and then take turns telling short anecdotes (one or two sentences) about what the suggestion reminds us of from our own personal life experiences.

Tonight our suggestion was:

Oregon Trail.

The story I told was how Oregon Trail made me think of when I was in 4th grade and my mom was my computer teacher. Sometimes, during our lunch period, my mom would let me and my girlfriends (not those kind of girlfriends, these kind) come and use the computer lab to work on our poetry. You see, my girlfriends and I had started a poetry club, and we wanted to type our poems up and make our very own anthology. I wish to god I still had those poems. I honestly couldn’t even tell you what they were about, but I’m guessing they were mostly involved praising nature.

My love of poetry stayed with me for quite awhile and in high school I got in to some deeper shit. Every summer I would go to a 3 day poetry camp, called Wordland, taught by my drama teacher and her hippie poet husband… and I FUCKING LOVED IT. Seriously, it was always the highlight of my summer.

My last summer after high school, right before I went off to college to become a real boy, I went to camp for one last nerdfest. Wordland was extra magical that summer, as my future high school sweetheart went as well and we ended up having our first heavy make-out session lying in the tar driveway, underneath the stars at some Christian Brother’s retreat in Stillwater, MN.

After camp was over, I spent the rest of the summer working on my first (and final) book of poetry. I used my sister’s beat up old typewriter that was missing the ‘n’ key, leaving me to write in every ‘n’ by hand. My book was called Dreamsense. I dedicated it to my dog Happy, and made copies for my six closest friends.

Below is an awful, awful poem from Dreamsense about said make-out fest with my new girlfriend:

your palace of Lips
entangles me
eyes
like two black stones
standing in a pool of intensity
falling back into heaven
causing an electric shock of spine wonderment
a swelling river sweeps through my throat
leaving only the tastes of swirls
and pink
to remain bittersweet in my toes

It’s interesting that our kiss remained bittersweet (in my toes– WTF?) This probably had to do with the fact that I was a flaming gaywad, and deep down inside, my body was rejecting her womanly lips. (These lips, not those lips!)