Holy Crap, Batman!

Well, I did edit my initial response when I found this blog post after Googling myself day before yesterday.  But still, HOLY CRAP!


http://vickyloras.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/my-post-for-marisa-constantinidess-blog-challenge-a-disabled-access-friendly-world-lessons-for-the-elt-classroom/

A lesson plan for one of my poems?!?  I'm being taught in high school?  (OK, somewhere, perhaps, maybe?)  Now I feel like a real author.  You know, like being taught in school is validating.  (No sarcasm meant at all.)  By reading the Vicky's Blog post, I learned that December 3^rd is International Disability Day.  

Several of my poems have been accepted & published by Wordgathering.*  It is the online journal of disability poetry and essays edited by members of the Inglis House Poetry Workshop in Philadelphia, Pa.  I'm currently at the tail end of re-editing the chapbook which most of those poems were written toward, in yet another of Robert Lee Brewer's PAD** challenges.  But more on that later, as in another blog post.

I still have trouble believing that one of my little, off-the-cuff poems from one of RLB's Wednesday prompts has a lesson plan.  And this poem is pretty much transcribed as I wrote it in my poetry notebook, in December of 2009.   I was on a roll coming off of another intense 30 days of poetry. 

Makes me feel like someone needs to poke me to deflate my ego.   And no, you can't volunteer, David.  No one would see you take me down anyway, Ninja-boy.***


Dreams

My  
dreams
consist of
climbing stairs,
one by one, feeling
muscles clench and relax
at the direction of nerves driven
by my will to ascend up and up, away
from the darkness of waking, immobile, in
                                                my hospital bed.


*Dreams appeared in the December 2010 issue.  Zwolf was in the June 2011 issue as the 3rd place winner (for authors without disabilities) of their annual poetry contest.  Birth Pains was published in the December 2011 issue. 

** Both RLB's Poem-A-Day April Challenge and the November Chapbook Challenge turn 5 this year.  He also posts a weekly prompt for rabid poets on Wednesdays the rest of the year. 

*** We once clothes-lined each other, at the same time, in the middle of a karate class and NO ONE NOTICED!

Not sure I wanna do this...

but Robert Lee Brewer challenged me, so I'd better step up to the, er, internet.

I'm an introvert.  I am the wallflower with her face stuck in the book at parties.  Or looking for reasons to just not go in the first place.  Or hiding behind the camera because I hate to have my picture taken.  Often photographers like to hide this way.

I prefer to communicate with written, not spoken, words. Or images, if I'm carting the camera around.  I guess blogging should feel comfortable.  But it sure is scary doing this first post.  Which, truth be told, I should have done a few days ago.  But I think I was trying to get out of town for Easter and, well, I procrastinated.

I think I'm up to 5/7 of RLB's Platform challenge*.  The challenge is to get a number of us who write to his Poem-A-Day Challenges** in April (National Poetry Month) and November (poem/chapbook version of NaNoWriMo***) out into the real world.  Those of us who are scared silly sharing our work with others.  Or at least, the general public.

I'm trying to write not one, but two poems a day (what can I say, I'm a masochist! and I have more than one project going at a time).  During the same 30 days, I'm also attempting to set up an internet presence without having internet at my house.  (I don't have cable either.)

Ah, yes, I am aware that this is insane.

On that note, I'm signing off .  Maybe I'll catch up tomorrow.

I'm still blaming Robert.

*You can find the platform challenge at the blog My Name Is Not Bob.
**The Poem-A-Day challenge can be found at Poetic Asides with Robert Lee Brewer.
***National Write a Novel in a Month