So I should be sleeping right now, but I'm in this strange space where I'm exhausted and yet not sleepy.

We worked on the script for the show until 2 a.m. yesterday, to hear today at read-through that it's close but not quite there -- in fact, not really even close. Oh, the pieces all exist, for the most part (they better, after three solid weeks of writing for a damn 20-minute show), but we're too heavy, too serious, not enough lightness, not enough joy.

and the instincts of the powers that be always lead them to work by the guys, which is starting to make me want to throw myself out a window. it's so strange, the pull between the very natural and human desire to Succeed, to Please, to be the one of whom the boss says "that's it! yes, absolutely!" and the years of pushing and pushing to be different, experimental, authentic -- and the two aren't mutually exclusive, necessarily, not all the time, but yes, much of the time they are. or they seem so.

what on earth am I doing here? it makes almost no sense that I'm on this project. it's not even about getting certain issues into the show anymore -- there's no time to go into analysis or complexity, and the crowd's going to be STANDING -- not even sitting -- so it's more about feeling that I have a place in this show, that something even sounds like me.

part of me -- a big part -- just wants to get the damn thing written so I can leave the country for two weeks. which will happen. part of me just wants to quit, come home, go totally academic, pretend the slam thing and the def jam thing and all that never happened, go esoteric and wear long corduroy skirts and nubby wool cardigans and hang out only with people who aren't surprised at my regular use of the word "caveat." which won't happen. I think that I am hard-wired against quitting. and then there's that whole contract thing.

ugh. I'm just whiny now, and homesick like a college freshman. yes, it's fantastic that the job is poetry -- but (a) it's a strange thing when your love is your job, and (b) at this point it's not about the poetry. it's not writing and trying to get published or writing and trying to perform -- it's about putting together 18-20 minutes of material from four different poets, honor their voices, remain nonpartisan, deliver messages, effect change, grab the attention of random college students crossing a quad -- oh, and try not to lose your soul in the process.

lovely -- from whiny to melodramatic. that's a sign it's time for bed.

here's a new poem that has nothing to do with the show, but I did write it out here. sigh. I don't like the title so much -- suggestions are welcome!

proof

the lie is that we are all the same
which is different from the lie that we are separate

which we are, and aren't -- I'm not explaining this
very well. clearly I am not you or these words

would be different words, another indication
that we are entirely distinct beings, not even

separated at birth but strangers, though you
with hands and I with hands, both with these

opposable thumbs, that critical moment
in our collective evolution -- I, for example,

dislocated my right thumb running drunk
across a college campus during homecoming

and smacking into a tree branch. you
have done no such thing. would know better

than to head full-tilt toward the dorm, no matter
how badly you had to pee, would know

not to turn your head on the dark path when the friend
racing to follow calls your name, leading you straight

into a low tree-branch, ear-first, falling of course
to the ground and catching your full weight

on a thumb not intended to take it. but you
might have been the ER nurse who studied it and

without warning, popped it back into place. or not.
but here's the thing: you could have been. as I was starting

this story, you could have frowned, remembering your brief
stint in the emergency room of McCullough-Hyde Hospital

in Oxford, Ohio, the hospital the local college kids call
Kill-'Em-and-Hide-'Em, how many dislocated joints

you relocated there, how homecoming was the worst,
all the recent grads trying to recapture their glory days

at Hole in the Wall or Mac & Joe's -- or not. that
would be a stretch, a coincidence at least, if not

a miracle. a small one, to be sure, but what luck
to find you here just as faith was disintegrating -- what luck

to fall in love at all --