Free at last, free at last...no disrespect to the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, but thank GOD almighty, I'm free at last!!!

Last day at the high school today--filled out my time sheets, dropped off seven classes worth of student poems with comments like "Nice work!" and "Maybe you could find a simile here?" in the appropriate teacher's boxes. A feeling of shame for being so burned out, but then again, it's been a very full year and we're barely five months in.

The air is almost unbearably sweet tonight, the heavy bunches of jasmine hang over my fence and release their perfume. It's cool and fragrant, so lovely it makes me shiver. I carried a mountain of paperwork up to my bed, got a couple of trash bags and began methodically going through it--oh, look, my car registration, oh look, the gas bill, oh look...all the stuff I just couldn't deal with for the past few months. It's not so bad. I need to go through my old lesson plans as well, edit, throw out the old, in with the new, reorganize, reshuffle...hey, doesn't Mercury go retrograde in a few days?

I'm getting a head start on the trend.

the feeling of lightness and freedom is exquisite. I sent SHWAF to one more poetry book contest--that makes six, that makes $150.00 in entry fees for that little exercise alone, enough already, who do I have to fuck to get a second book published, but I've done all I can, now give it a rest, turn my attention to the other five projects bubbling away...

The Sun came with my poem Liar in it, which I wrote three years ago. I am so far away from the feelings in it now, it's strange to see it, like an old photograph of myself in a really bad haircut. Thank God I'm not in that emotional place anymore.

Tuesday I took myself to see a matinee of After the Wedding and cried a river over the father-daughter, husband-wife, old-lovers scenes--they were so raw and well-done. Powerful acting, beautiful, intimate camera angles, slow-cooking family story, suffused with pain and love...