summers return

It's a strange thing to see but I've come full circle now since last year this time. Unemployed again, but mostly solvent, I have a summer of insanity ahead of me. Certainly there will be hard work but the sun is feeling warmer, my legs getting used to the long bike rides, and I don't dread waking up in the morning.

The odd part. That I'm finishing off my MA, completing suddenly this kickstart to a new career. And now I actually have to do something with it. I'm not sure what I'd imagined this being like, but I hadn't thought I'd be quite this petrified to find out what I've learned.

I've done my time, made the grades for sure, but this really hasn't included any kind of road test. No on site training. And now the first thing I get to sell is myself. I lack 'prior substantiation' and it's killing me. Oh law test, how you haunt me.

In the mean time, I've got a two inch stack of notecards to go through, a glass of wine to counteract all the coffee I've mainlined, and the promise of putting off studying to clean my apartment during the day...

"Funny thing about weekends when you're unemployed..."

- - - - -

outside the air is warming
with the sounds of mariachi music
shrill screeches of children down the street
the sweet smell of melons
mixing over the cut grass ive smelled all day
it tells me im home

i havent spent enough time here of late
the days are too long
filled with bike rides and uncertainties
passing over my own stress
as friends colapse and call upon me
it makes it easier
distraction without blame

the floors of my apartment are filthy
thick with two months of cooking
that i havent done
a long day stretches ahead of me
to end in bruised knees and wrinkled finger tips
but clean scrubbed surfaces
unblackedned feet treading over floorboards

if i wake early enough
i will see the sunrise red
heating the ochre of our living room walls
it will be warm tomorrow
breezes drying puddles left behind by scrub brush and mop
i will follow the patterns of the wood grain
up and down the length of the hallway

there are more paintings to put up
more photos to put into frames
but i have already taken up two walls
with bookcases
my posessions dominate what space is meant to be shared
yet i feel a stranger
an interloper
without claim upon the couch i own

even as i promise to spend more time here
to take the time off and relax
i know
how little idle time im willing to give

the breeze picks up
carrying mens voices from the alley way
car alarms and sirens distantly blaring

i will sprawl in my bed
sleeping away another night.