jackshoegazer | I will survive.

I survived another creative writing workshop. This time there were almost no criticisms and a ton of praise. Apparently this poem is particularly good. Now I have the problem of upping the ante or at least writing another poem equally awesome in a couple weeks. This one is a revision of a poem I did a couple years ago, so some of you may recognize it:

Listen

It was late in the day
when I sat
alone on that bench,
wood so worn it wrinkled,
in air dry and thick with grit,
and the afternoon sun pushed the silhouette
of my barred window
across the floor.

I picked up the tin cup,
thin and dented and grey,
with a million imprints
and fingerprints,
smudges and
smears of oil and salt and
hope
and I rattled that cup
against the bars of my cell
and made the music of ghosts–
clink, clank.
Like a mystic at a magic gate,
the right note would open
sesame.

The sheriff slanted in the door
and said, “Only God can get you out,
but I hear he’s got a tin ear
for bullshit.”

However, I am not doing terribly well in French. Last year I successfully managed an AB both semesters. So far, I'm looking at solid B or BC range. It's like I was supposed to have been studying French all summer. Suddenly I am supposed to be able to listen and follow along perfectly even though I've never heard or learned most of the vocabulary used. It's ridiculously frustrating, but it's the last semester I have to take it, so there's at least light at the end of this hellish francophone tunnel.