November 29
John Grisham
My time hovering low over the ocean has filled me until I am ready to drop. The weight of what is inside me bears down; I know with the slightest cooperation I will become a rainmaker. I am mostly fine with this; I know from whence the rain was derived and I can let it fall in peace. What I don’t know how to handle is the acknowledgement. The difference between what I know and what you might think is vast and if I try to dissuade you I sound disingenuous or fraudulent. I have to get my head around the part I play and accept the roses when they come. I don’t understand how this looks from offstage or what it means to those who watch. I hope they will enjoy the work but never mistake me for the playwright.
Greet the day with open eyes
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BLEATING FORMALITY
Stupidity stalks me when I’m tired
Hi-jacking my mouth and my mind
I can put this off to pilot error or interruption
Of service on my neurologic pipeline
But truly I have been captured
By senseless irrational mutinous.
I would love to say it was pig headedness
But alas I am not self-determined, I am a sheep
I open my lips and out pours the same
Plaintive cry as the surrounding herd.
In addition, once begun the wail is unending.
It’s as if the bellows works on its own
Carrying a tune which blends
With the entire wool coated world.
I shift and run with my position
According to the movements at large.
I am following the reactionary breed
Dropping the specifics of my personality
As one of the crowd, my brain switched off
And a quick veneer grows over my eyes
I can’t see, think or speak for myself
And yet it doesn’t occur to me to hit the hay.
When as a petulant three year old
I fall asleep in my tract, I awake as myself,
With many bleating apologies to be made.
You are reading selections from More Sober on the Way to Sane and Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault
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