Nothing to speak of/(so I wrote something really fast)

Intro:
I don't really have anything to write about today. I don't know if I feel comfortable meandering around on a blog, so I'll try it.

Habits:
I did hear that cigarettes are $9 a pack in New York, so I feel justified in buying books. The unbridled courage smokers have in plunking down ten for their habit gives me the courage to plunk down ten for, in particular, the Penguin Books Great Ideas series. In one bookstore I pass on Madison Ave., on my way to work, there's a whole wall of the things -- thin books, covers embossed with maybe a quote from the work, a stylish retro red-and-white design ... I am helpless! Everything from Seneca's On the Shortness of Life to Nietzsche's Why I am so Wise.

Exorcising the Shy:
It's courageous because I am just on the brink, again, of being impoverished. Spinning on a dizzy edge (air) ... And I'm also embarking, soon, on a creative activity that's going to require me to have composure, of sorts, in front of people. So, I'm singing karaoke. A lot of karaoke, trying to enlist co-workers to go with me -- getting up in front of people again to at least try to knock off that edge. If I had my guitar here, I would busk in the subways. I might also try a poetry slam, and am scouting a likely venue in the Village tonight. So, just books and Bleeker St., and probably the Battery this morning, to read by the water while it's still cool. Nothing of which to speak.

How it turned out:
Tonight's out-in-front-of-people thing was poetry slam at the (very, very fun) Bowery Poetry Club. I had never even seen a poetry slam before, I'm ashamed to say, (after all those shifts at Coffee Underground)! So ... I kind of got a quick overview, and since it was a nerd-themed slam tonight, decided to try. I wrote that stinking thing in @ 15 mintues and ... well, got up and performed it. Some good response! Some things I know I need to definitely work on. But ... extremely worthwhile. Here's my nerd love to Loch Ness (and the general field of cryptozoology).

Poem:
Black slate clasps
the surface of black slate breaks
up through Loch Ness--
my monster

They say peat bleeds green,
obscures your world-- empty --
40 feet below the air--
plieosaur

I know they shut the case, say
you're fake, but I'll see your face
slytherine, serpentine

in the labyrinthine loch,
prehistoric rift, a gift evolution missed --
dinosaur!

Faithful, I wait (even at work)
watching the Loch's webcam, bookmarked
on my MacBook --
Monster,

choose me to be the one to see
you emerge
to hit "save," and "freeze."