MECHANICS OF PAIN

Still alive... although maybe not for long. This time I am not to blame. Not entirely, anyway. This was supposed to be a relaxed year, only four courses and some teaching. And then hours and hours to write and ride and meditate and sleep and sip tea and take long baths... So naive.
I have never had so much work. I have never studied so much or applied myself so much. No-one has ever required so much from me. I am taking three courses this semester, and for every class, every day, I have to submit an essay, read a book and/or prepare a presentation. Then, I teach five classes, of different levels of difficulty. I am also preparing for the GRE -- I have just begun with the Math, God, I don't remember anything. I am also writing like crazy, poems, and memoir. I am very much involved in Amnesty International. World Aids Day is coming and we have so many things planned... and after the NorthEastern Conference in Boston I proposed to take up action on the case of Prof. Mesfin in Ethiopia, and I think I'll be co-ordinating it. I don't have a real social life anymore, unless you take into account the Hellos in the library or in the queue for coffee. I spend my days running from one place to another, but still it doesn't seem like I get anything done. How is that possible? I don't understand.
I need a break. Thanksgiving is next week. But I can't stop working. There is so much to do. And the semester is almost over. I can't stop right now.
The profs. warn me about grad school. They say it's even more demanding. But it's also true that Mt. Holyoke it's the 2nd university in the country in homework overload, after Yale and before Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, or Berkeley. I am definetely applying for the M.F.A. in Creative Writing. I have decided it. I think that I couldn't manage the PhD in English right now. FiVe to seven more years of intesive teaching and research and classes and writing and reading would burn me completely. I want to focus on writing. I need to write. I want to write. And it is easier to get into the PhD once you have the MFA. Plus, with the MFA you already have a professional degree, you already can earn good money and stop depending on crappy financial aid.
Poems, poems, poems. Bad poems written during my bath time or my bus time, because I don't have time to have peotry time. I need poetry time.

Black waters are falling -
softly, softly
unto your feet.
Although the diseases of the world
are within us
we do not talk - yet.
This is our darkest time
and it is forever ours.


No country whispers my name
at the border
The sky is dark
almost red -
at night as always
we are alone
My hair is growing long
and I don't think I will cut it
so it can save me
from the cold
We find ourselves
in different places
when sleep arrives
to touch our feverish mouths
We enter a foreign land
where they speak an unknown language
and someone points at us
and then - I die.