Amiee made this awesome video/photo montage (and I helped). Enjoy!

I've figured out my problem Grandma Barb, and as with so many other problems in my life, this one is my mom's fault. I'll start from the beginning: I got your email and was properly ashamed, so I decided to go check out my blog and maybe make a post. First, though, I had to find my blog. This task proved to be "exceeding difficult" (that's how Mr. Burns described taking candy from a baby when he decided to test the old adage). Okay, maybe it wasn't exceedingly difficult, but difficult enough to be slightly comical. In the end, I navigated to The Bright Side through a link provided on Pieholden Suite (thanks Ben and Elissa).

Anyways, once I arrived, I started reading through the posts, from top to bottom, which was a bit confusing, and laughing at my own jokes--even as Amiee rolled her eyes. So I was like, "This was a pretty good blog--what happened?" And then I noticed that the last post before the Great Silence was not even authored by me, but by my mom. She knew that my blog was "blowing up" (cool slang for "rapidly gaining popularity") with poems almost every day and comments on almost every post, so she had to come into my house with her fancy English major poetry and steal all my readers. My own mother! No wonder I stopped blogging, right?

But perhaps the real lesson of the day is that Derek is a nag-powered creature (and I use nag in the nicest sense possible), meaning that if the right people prod me enough about some worthwhile thing I should do and I get enough "nag in the tank," then I'll probably do it. Although this is better than me not being powered at all, I think one of the most important challenges facing me right now is to transition from nag-power to a more internal motivational fuel. I'll let you know how that transition goes (but you might need to remind me).

For instance, do you know how long a day is on Pluto????

I say bravo for D-man; you have already far exceeded my modest expectations in daily poem productions. Some days are longer than others. Like Gr. Barb, I was inspired to get in on the poeming; you reminded me that I had seen a poem while we were driving to Moorhead.

This Never Happened to Odysseus

I saw a poem today
on the prairie covered with white-gray snow,
revealed against the luminous gray-white sky:
A line of trees guarding the horizon
Back-lit,
Front-lit
by winter light, prairie light,
prairie winter light.
I drank in its startling beauty.
I let the wispy fingers of the trees draw on
my mind and
stir my soul, my winter soul.

And while its sweet, numinous taste
lingered still on my lips,
there came another regiment
and another--
it was a many-stanzaed poem,
maybe an epic--
with marching lines
crossing, reconfiguring as I passed,
performing with precision a
silent halftime show that
surrounded me on the field.
My mind whirled, lifted out
of my body; and now I could

see
myself in the poem
360 degrees of sky and
every valley lifted up
every mountain laid low and
a smooth
level
ribbon of road carrying home
my prairie soul.
My winter prairie soul.

Two firsts today: I finally caved and ate a donut at lunch, after resisting at every other meal this year up until today (it was delicious--custard-filled too!), and my one class for tomorrow got cancelled (good news, except that it is a result of my teacher suffering a mild concussion in some kind of freak accident). Pretty exciting day on the whole. I think I will use my extra free time tomorrow to do laundry. Cool. Does anyone know what word was combined with "biscuit" to get Triscuit crackers?

Quantity or Quality?

As I lower the bucket into my well of deep thoughts
I have to keep going deeper and deeper.

Or maybe my bucket has a hole in it.

Sorry about the name-calling brb. It's just that putting other people down in a (possibly) humorous way makes me feel better about myself. Oh yeah, and I wish I could describe the hotel smell, but I don't remember what it smells like exactly. I'll try to get to a hotel sometime soon. Actually, I could tell you what an 80-year-old hotel room smells like: Glade Plug-Ins.

The Parthenon in Greektown

In the back corner (deliberately?)
Someone comments that the walls must be paint-by-number
But wouldn't it be nice to have a view of the sea?
A blue-view. Certainly.
I have a view of the sea
Of people. Swaying and roaring
With the bursts of flame.
People who will be the same when they leave.
My appetite has left, or at least
It is buried.
Oh, do I know you?
Don't do as I do;
My view is blue.

Did I say a poem every day? I meant one poem per day on average. Brb suggested that I knock it back to a poem a week, further proof of her pessimism and defeatist attitude. But I will not be brought down by Captain Bring-Down. I was gonna write two today, but now it's too late. Maybe tomorrow. Oh yeah, and thanks to Ben for the poemment (poem/comment). It had a lot of feeling. I should try that.

ODE TO A CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

It's a good reason to wake up--even if you are on vacation.
You can't smell it from your hotel bed (that only happens in movies),
But you know the continental breakfast is downstairs
Because the tall sign promised it would be.

So you do get up, and it feels good;
You're not tired because this is a special thing.
There's no need to go through your whole morning routine
Because it's just continental breakfast.

Hopefully, you are with people who make you feel comfortable
So the experience is not ruined by small-talk anxiety
And you can focus on your toast and muffins
And watch CNN.
No news this morning.