There are 20ish poems and counting here.

There is never just one inciting incident in a decision. Everything exists in the context of every thing that came before it. A common sentiment in this newsletter.

As I’m thinking about the last third of my 30/30, I’ve been thinking a lot about the inciting incidents that led me to this particular precipice.

I’ve been thinking about the aznzinefest. I’ve been thinking about the errant idea to host monthly Sip & Scribes which will become a reality in about 5 days. I’ve been thinking about the fact that despite being… oh god, a decade, removed from the slam poetry scene and the poetry scene, there are still many folks who know and recognize me as a poet. And there are still parts of me that I think recognize that I have never stopped being a poet, because what is a poet if not someone who plays with language? Isn’t a poet someone who is meant to evoke feeling? Isn’t a poet someone who instructs in their own way?

I’ve been a technical writer for 12 years. A pop culture journalist for 8. I’ve been writing since middle school, so that’s almost two decades and change. And poetry has been with me intermittently since high school, very prominently in college, and now is making a second act apperance in my mid-thirties.

This has been the hardest 30/30 I’ve done, even more so than the first one or the second, which as Louis Sachar in Holes taught us, are typically the two hardest ones. I’ve never lacked the discipline or drive. I’ve never had a problem with making bad things because the purpose was never to make a good thing, it was to make a thing, and then incidentally maybe make a good thing.

This 30/30 has been my rage against the capitalist machine and hellscape. This 30/30 has been shaking off all of the rust. This 30/30 has been the brain stalling and spewing things from recesses of the mind that I am kind of impressed that some combination of words came out in that particular sequence, because what do you mean we’ve done an erasure, a contrapuntal, a madlib, an invented form based on the pechakucha, and a pantoum this past week? What do you mean I still have a week and a half to go?

At some point, I will stop being impressed by my own exasperation. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I don’t want to stop being impressed by the exasperation. Maybe I should be impressed with it all. The days where things come easy. The days where things are really hard. Maybe, I’ll shake the rust and soak and find that I can still impress myself when I’m not grinding.

Anyways, one more week of reflection and then I think we resume our usual programming. Or maybe we take it as a cue to do something new. Who knows? Certainly not I.