If you're planning on staging a coup (and an increasing number of Americans are considering it), this is how you want it to go. Clearly, there are some lessons to be learned here.

It's like a friendly day at the state fair. With tanks.

From the Mumbai Mirror:

Stuart Dischell

I can't tell you how happy I am tonight (or this morning, whatever it is now). I've rediscovered myself, unearthed myself somehow from wherever it is I have been for the past six years. I've actually finished two poems in the past week, ones that I am actually proud of, ones that I think have a chance. I also wrote one really sucky poem about toads, but we won't go into that.

I had half of a decent poem put together this afternoon, but it was missing something - it had some nice images, decent snapshots, but it had no story. Then I reread one of Stuart Dischell's poems from Dig Safe called "Days of Me." Slate previously printed it here.

In short, Stuart's poem brilliantly captures a longing for a former self, albeit an idealized one. It exactly captured the kind of feeling I was looking for in my own poem and as soon as I put his book down I couldn't stop typing, shaping the piece and pasting my previous scatterings of images around a new storyline. So - thanks, Stuart, for the inspiration.

Now I should probably go to bed.

I have a current list of books that I must read. Furthermore, I insist to myself that they must be read in the order presented below:

The Brief History of the Dead - Kevin Brockmeier

All the Names - José Saramago

Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Information - Martin Amis

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

And I don't have a reason for this, so don't ask. I also want to limit myself to one week for each book. If I can't read a book in a week, it either didn't interest me enough or I'm just a remedial reader. I can't blame work or that I don't otherwise have time. One must make time to read.

I also have a new mandate to write one poem or story per week. That gives me 52 per year, which is well above the pace I've been rolling with for the past six years. If I stick to that and start submitting my work again, I could possibly maybe (thank you, Ms. Guðmundsdóttir) start to have some sort of personal renaissance and get myself out of this horrid rut I've been in lately.

Oddly enough, my inspiration as of late has been coming from the Arctic and Antarctic. I've always been drawn to the polar regions (the graphic at the top of my site is of a small Alaskan town), but the images keep recurring in everything I do lately. I'm reading The Brief History of the Dead now, half of which takes place in Antarctica. British Sea Power have been playing even more than usual on my iPod, and the song I keep going back to is "Oh Larsen B" on Open Season. What other band could write a tribute to a fallen 12,000 year old ice shelf?

That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. I once wrote about goats playing hockey. Well, goats on ice in general, but hockey was part of it. That may have been a bit extreme, but it's time I got back in that neighborhood. Except not just for the sensational image of goats playing hockey, but goats playing hockey as a metaphor. For what, I don't know, but maybe you see what I mean.

I have to go now and finish this book. My week is actually up, and I have to maintain these deadlines.

The following safety message was blast-emailed today at work:

Safety Rule for September, 2006:

Rule 1027 - Scuffling, horseplay, practical jokes, and conduct of a similar nature while on duty or on Company property are prohibited.

- Building Safety Committee

No one has scuffled in the past four years I've spent here, but I wish they would. The days would be a lot more exciting.