Torn. Partly because I feel like an outsider after being out of the CanLit loop for six years as I ran a business-I had been planning to apply to a local university’s creative writing program but now having serious doubts. My son thinks it’s a waste of money. The tuition is thousands of dollars I do not have. Attendance would help facilitate the production of a new book but perhaps I can find some other less expensive program. Can’t even join or start a writers group thanks to the pandemic.

And then there’s the matter of genre; should I tackle another novel or stick to verse? It is my forte.  Perhaps I should determine to do it all. *sigh* Do I sound confused? I never should have run away and joined the punk rock circus! Back in the day I had accrued two years of community college credits intending to apply to UBC to study literature when I fell in with the Subhumans, the Dishrags and DOA. Oh well, at least I gained subject matter.

And now I am a variable. Perhaps we all are during these plague days. Though aspects of my life suck at the moment, the muse has stuck around. First draft:

NOBILITY EXTRACTED FROM THE VIRTUAL

Via language, despite methodized
Connections, monetized clicks.
Influence down to a science.
Resist Google. Manipulation.

Toast Twitter, or at least,
Notifications Off.
How many Likes will it take
To get through puberty?

Pass the imagination please.
So full of information,
Content,
I could retch.

What’s so great about virtuality
After all? Language betrays it,
Stabalizes,
The way language steadies
You. Me. Us.

So theremalize me dear, for
I am a variable without you.
Be my rompish beacon,
My poetic vane.

Language will ennoble.
Language will
Extract the nobility
Within us all.