I had to do some reading for class, which was fascinating, about the rituals of death in the Romantic period. However, one chapter we had to read was called "The Corpse and Popular Culture" and every time I saw the word corpse I read the word Grandma.

"Rigor mortis of the [grandma] sets in first in the eyelids. Pennies would be placed on the [grandma]'s eyes to ensure that they remained closed. The [grandma] would need to be cleaned, due to the relaxing of the muscles after death..."

It's like a particularly morbid Mad Lib, isn't it?

Then I had to write a response paper. Under other circumstances, I might have used the opportunity to rant about the funeral industry, which I think is designed to exploit people in their time of grief. But instead, I just excerpted some relevant portions of my journal and added some commentary.

Still and all, by the time I was finished, I was damn depressed.

I had a successful day at school, though: I wrote three poems. This is a landmark for me because I exactly haven't been creatively fecund lately. You would think, with all the death and heartbreak going on around here, that I'd be spouting out poetry left and right, but that just hasn't been the case.

I wrote one poem as sort of an homage to Checkers, one of my classmates. Checkers is actually quite a freak. He teamed up with Deb to write some collaborative couplets for our class. There were six lines in the poem, and it took them two hours to do it. They are entirely in his style, which I like to call "Incomprehensible Garbage Nouveau."

Here is an actual line from the poem, in its entirety:

sing-lets had a man AM

All of his poetry sounds like this. All of it. Actually, this line is much more comprehensible than most, because it actually is comprised of real words. Let's explore a line further down in the poem:

AA am andam Aa ma'am

I am not making this up. I am not even slightly making this at all up. When he recited this thing in class and said it took two hours to do it, I turned to Joey with a look of incredulous disbelief on my face. "It took two people two hours to write this? I could throw a SHOE at my keyboard, and write a better poem than this."

I could, too.

But I guess I should be grateful to Checkers, because he inspired me to write a poem for him that turned out well. Plus, the real bitch of it is, I kind of have a soft spot for him. Here's why. He writes all of his poetry on "treefree paper" (the reason I know this is that he notes it on every sheet) which he orders from Canada.

It may be kind of silly to write "treefree paper" on every sheet, but I admire him for it. He told me that he's self conscious about it, but he wants to get the message out there that it exists. I, for one, never knew it existed and I plan to buy some as soon as I can afford it. And I also admire his dedication to saving the trees. So I can't really be too hard on the guy.

And I will also pass his message along. If you can afford it (and particularly if you're in charge of buying office supplies for your wealthy multinational company) buy treefree paper. It's a great idea.

To round off my school-centric entry, I'll also include a poem that I wrote in one of my classes today. If you're not on the list (clearly, you have your reasons) and you'd like some further explanation, don't hesitate to write. Because it does mean something.

a round nude on my flannel sheets
her eyes changed color every time she blinked
tiny and plump and vague and imaginary
she held me at midnight,
she kissed me at 3 a.m.
she was the never again girl.

she used to sing to me
on the days that she knew how to sing
her breasts grew and
shrank and disappeared
in october, in may she never even
opened her eyes.

she was seventeen women
i met on the street, she was
one woman seventeen times.
for about 48 hours she spoke
japanese. the only guarantee
was that she was always something
always waiting. always there.
i remember the day roses grew in her hair.

but you only have
one gender, one laugh, one impression
that fits the curve of your back.
you took steps from unknown to
naked, and her outlines started
to become yours. it was harder
for her to blink the blue away
until she couldn't do it at all.
she started to smell like gardenia
and only gardenia. but she used
to smell vanilla on tuesdays
and like dark french chocolate
on the fifth of every month.

(until she was given your name,
baptized by sweat and other
body juices, she was
the never again girl.)

i didn't know we could press her
between us like a rare orchid
and release her fragrance.
while we gasped, i did not hear her
quietly gasping her last breath. we are
murderers, you and i, and you put her
behind your ear, and looked beautiful,
and walked away.

and now my heart floats in air, and my lips
close on air, and my fingers cover air.

and the never again girl is gone...
or else she was never there.

"No, no, I thought, this isn't the direction I want to go in. I want to sound my barbaric yawp, or something. Not complain about my co-workers and Charlotte and Danielle and all the same old shit.