I'm finally free from my self assigned Kentucky poetry

I finished, today, a 7 day series of poems based on Kentucky. It became progressively more difficult to think of a new way to approach the subject, but I think a few of them turned out pretty well. I started the series because I find myself, fairly often, in places wanting to rep my state, and while I have some Kentucky poems, they never feel ‘right.’

In other news, I am still unemployed (8 months now. My debt is ridiculous, and my savings destroyed). This is essentially, of course, my own stupid fault, but a part of me revels in the freedom it grants me to write, every single day.

And I have; every day since April I've written at least one poem. Also on my schedule:

• Reading a certain number of blogs.
• Reading a certain amount of poems from a list of online publications, to get a sense of the market.
• Learning a certain number of new words (hey, that GRE is coming up).
• Writing, about every other day, an article for Examiner or a blog entry.
• Doing all the house work for Regan that I can.

But this very involved schedule drains me quite a bit each day, and it doesn't help any that my spirits are in a constant state of depression from being unemployed. I need a job, any job, and soon, or barring that, to remove some of the things from my heavy schedule.

I will admit I am not the most focused person in the best of times, but I haven't really been able to read regular (see: print) books, or write short stories.

Here's the last poem in my series, inspired by Third Street Stuff, an Affrilachian hangout in Lexington, KY:

An Escape to Third Street Stuff

The walls are brushed in ocean-water pigments
and copper-red paint, dried grape sheen
and sunflower-liquor rouge. And there, set
in the creases, are seashells removed from some
far away sea, each of them deliberately laid.

We walk through the doors, past
the benches, and notice how they bow
a bit for the weight of artists. They
express interest in the newest display:
framed photographs of dangerously
attractive men; a drag show in wide-
shouldered glory, set unabashedly to film.

We are met with apothecary bottles of loose
leaf teas at the counter, order coffee and
bottled drinks. Then we walk—holding our
hot and cold stories—past the makeshift
poems on the wall, to a set of seats resting
on the black checkered tile. We silently watch
a wavering white ghost escape from its bleak
espresso, and hold softly these tables,

or absently grip a gently kissed bottle
of Ale-8, which is sweating sweetly in the air.
Ensnared by the atmosphere, we've forgotten
about the traps that hold to us outside, those
obese clouds rolling this earth, the world
that awaits darkly at the end of our rides,
back at whatever we choose to call regular.

Isn't this some slice of Kentucky?