Your Optimistic Pedicure

I used to write a lot of poetry. 25 years ago, poetry was my expression of choice. I even thought someday I might grow up to be -- a POET. Gasp. The catch was I didn't like to show anyone my poetry and I refused to read it out loud. "If I wanted to be someone who stood on a stage and PERFORMED, I'd be an ACTOR," I insisted, not understanding the nature of either profession but being too afraid of everything to stop and examine myself for one hot second.

I did all my writing in notebooks (but not expensive ones, I was too broke for that) and then typed it up on my word processor, which was within the Eight-In-One suite of Office Tools that came with our PC, purchased in 198something. Dad let me take the computer when I moved out, which was really generous of him considering he didn't want me to move out in the first place. Eight-In-One also had seven other tools but I didn't use them. Just the word processor. Then I would print out my poems because they looked more real that way. By the mid-nineties I had a stack, like probably 150 poems all printed on the paper with the perforated edges. Tear the strips off and decorate your house for parties. Use it for packing material when you move. Make a hilarious headband.

The poems were a document of my relationships and my world. Poems about boyfriends and about social issues in my neighbourhood and friend-hood, like poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, abortion. I read them again a few years ago and they weren't awful. They weren't publishable either. They were like an artsier version of my regular journal.

Now I occasionally write poetry -- how hard it is to call it "poetry" and not diminish it by saying "poetically" or "lyrically" -- to get through a blockish sort of spot in other writing. I'm always pleasantly surprised by how playing with words and turning off the linear narrator, the one who insists on telling the story a certain way, yields different ideas and perspectives.

Lately instead of stories or essays or poems, I think of titles. Can I just write a book of titles? I guess I could start with a list of titles. I guess I can write whatever I want. The other day I wrote a poem to a woman I saw on my way to work. She came out of her apartment building wearing Birkenstocks. It went like this:

I’m worried about your toes

It’s colder out here than you think.

Your keys are in your right hand

Fingers closed, knuckles pink

And your hair flows down your back

Butterscotch ripple

Over your black jacket

Over the shirt draped over the capri pants

Above your ankle tattoo

I pass you at the corner as you pick your way down,

over uneven pavement and wet cobblestones.

A few minutes later I see you on the same train as me

Your bare toes out in this crowded car

Your optimistic pedicure

Now sparkling with dewdrops.

When I re-read it I see that it's (I'm) saying something about my own nature: my tendency to expect the worst and be over-prepared, mentally and physically, for things that may or may not happen. My willingness to worry on behalf of everyone. People suffer for beauty and I admire and envy the choice of impracticality. It represents such freedom, to say: fuck it! It's too cold for sandals but my toes are pretty so I'm wearing sandals and hang the consequences.

Poetry can teach us so much.

I'm back on my long train commute after six months of short train commute, so I'm just gleeful to be given that half hour of constrained writing time back. 30 minutes wedged in between strangers who stand close enough to be friends. My goal for the next month(or so) is just to keep the pen moving and not think too much as I'm doing it. Plenty of time for overthinking when I'm sorting out what's wheat and what's chaff when I've got two hours to rub together.