I'm making soup. Yes, from cans. And some frozen tortellini. Tortellini is good in soup. Maybe best when it's had the heck cooked out of it. But we'll probably be hungry before then. Oh, yeah. I hafta zap a leftover veggie dish. I'll go do that. In a minute.

I've been thinking I'd like to start my own poetry group. Lead it. Not democracy. Me. If you like my stuff and/or just like my style of talking/teaching then you're welcome. There'd be a writing exercise each time. If anybody wants to workshop one of their own poems written outside then fine. Bring copies for everybody. Like that. No long waiting for people to drag some dislike out of the depths of their being. If it hasn't done already riz it's gonna hafta stay down there. I hate them long pauses while everybody thinks, "What the fk'm I gonna say?" There are plenty of things I don't like about workshops. Are they ever useful? I think the useful thing is reading the work aloud. So somebody other than the poet ought to do the reading. You hear it like it's not yours. The problem is thinking there's more in the poem than is; maybe half of it is still in your head.

I'm thinking about it. Have a nice room upstairs we could use.

Had a good reading last week. It was at Pegasus Books in Berkeley. Turn out? Fifteen ... Something like that, I think.

I debuted recent work. Including, as I announced seconds before launching into it, "the longest poem I've ever written." Kent said the next day, "And nobody let out a groan!" I've mentioned this poem earlier in the blog. The one about emptiness. It was the poem I wrote in April. Margo asks if it's the only thing I wrote in April. I'm not sure what to make of that. Did it seem rather short, after all, to have been all I wrote for an entire month? Or ... hm ... sorry, failure of imagination happening. Dunno. Anyway, Dave Benson emailed me this week, says the damn thing held up. Even being so long and all. He could've said it totally sagged, right? It's not like we have a friendship that demands constant stroking. I mean, he coulda said, "Well, I kinda fell asleep in the middle." Right? That's right. And he didn't! So there. Was nice to meet Dave. I met him online two or three years ago. At a poetry bulletin board. He can write good. Michael M pub'd some Benson in his Hogtown Creek Review. For instance. Dave didn't hang around long. Introduced himself at the end of the reading. I was expecting really long blond hair. And it's more collar-length. Cut it, he said. I'd heard from Jack the Mad Anders that Dave had really long hair. Plus I saw a picture on Dave's girlfriend's blog of Dave with hair down to his butt. Hair aside, I was pleased to make the acquaintance in body which had only been cyberspaced. Wow. Real person. Isn't this stuff all generated inside some great Matrix somewhere? Sorry Dave left after a few sentences. "Been a long day," he said, leaving.

Thea Hillman was good. The other featured reader. Nice to read with somebody good. None of the open mikers were abysmal. Oh open mikes. Worse in my memory than in actuality, but that's cuz so many slosh together in the mind. The horrid stage hogs. The shouters.

Hope all is well with you, dear reader.