The first four hours of my day were frustrating wrestling matches with my words. These are always the hard periods, when I've got a few days off and try to get myself back into the writing mode. It's like a reunion with a long distance lover--always on your mind, you muse over the fated reconnection but when it finally happens it's inevitably awkward. Like with a long distance lover, I can't seem to put the sentences together when I'm finally called to.

I began four new poems, if you can call it that. Most of the time, these remain vignettes by default, the beginning breaths of epics that never find their voices, classics that never get to see the stage. Every one of them, I feel bad for, another good topic wasted on my loss for words. Worst of all, when I can't seem to write I end up writing pieces about how I can't seem to write. But they're less of frustrated writer's block rants, and more of upheavals of my spirit in hopes to get myself motivated. It doesn't work as well for poets as it does for rappers. Emcees get a lot more clout, notice how many intro tracks to hip-hop albums get away with simply being either a "Let's Go Do This!" "It's Time!" or "I'm Back, Bitches!" type anthem. Imagine if Robert Frost prefaced each of his collection of poems with "It's yo' boy back in da buildinnnnn!"

So the disadvantage of dabbling at four incomplete poems/short stories/reflections as opposed to, say, banging out a saucy-ass spoken word piece in one sitting, is much like a roadtrip with a bunch of landmarks, all of which end up being way less exciting than the brochures said they would be. So today, besides my "Uh, uh, let's get to writing, DRIZZLE!!" poem, I also managed to begin a cliché "Stand Up, My Asian People" poem and a phantom love letter to no one in particular. All that, on top of the fact that my internet is acting stupid and the new lotion I got makes me itchy, has given me ample grounds for whining.

My latest grasp at meaning in my day placed me in Borders. I picked up Earth Seed by Octavia Butler and The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Mused over the journal entries of Sylvia Plath, decided that most of my motivation in getting it was the idea of owning it, but then cracked it open and found myself gawking over random entries and buying the damned thing. In all honesty I sort of envy Plath for her journal, but only because of the limited knowledge I have of her mind's ongoings. Her life in the mid-century allowed her to evade the blog generation, of which I have become a tireless victim. Aside from that, I wonder if she ever expected for her personal dailies to one day become anthologized, bound in a sleek matt cover and discussed over lattés by hipsters. Surely, this knowledge would affect the way she wrote, as it does mine. I guess I don't find much comfort in writing my personal entries and thinking, "Oh, if they ever get published I'll be dead by then and it won't matter." Given that I'm far from a Plath, Giovanni, or Baldwin still in my wannabe writer-ness, but ego aside it does cross my mind, and it is fueled upon reading how even Plath aspired to be among the ranks of Yeats. These entries that I post are ultimately written for you, blog reader, and in writing with this intention do I compromise the genuinity of it?

It's unavoidable, I obsessively break the fourth wall. I catch myself thinking things to myself and then going 'ooh, that would be hot to publish one day.' All of this amounts to what I must face, which is that, over being a writer, I am a compulsive historian, a documentarian. I catch myself name-dropping people and places in my writing, not because I think it would promote anyone's notion of myself (after all, in today's age who can't muse over themselves deep enough to allot their company to anyone else in one way or another?), but I just can't resist the idea of how fly it would be one day, in the off-chance that all of these beautiful people I know become the legends that their potentials boast them to be. Those moments for future generations to say, "Word? She hung out with him?" In the same exaggerated glamour as the idea that Malcolm kicked it with Cassius, both giants in their own worlds but clung together by their ideals and friendship. I reflect on it often, with daydreams of black-and-white snapshots that have yet to be snapped, Luis, Hodge, and Begley huddled on dimly-lit suede couches, mouths gawked open mid-laugh, unaware of the shiny pages that such a moment will one day graze. Perhaps it's a bit self-indulgent. No, it's very self-indulgent. And once again, it's this irony that separates the poet from the emcee, as parallel as their roles may pan out to be. I find myself within earshot of complaints about how big-headed some of these rappers are, and I'm like "Who's surprised???" They're all up on their tracks talking about being the kings of their towns and eating other rappers, and you're surprised that they're picky about their bottled water? But in this neo-righteous-idolize-me-because-I- long-not-to-be-idolized world of spoken word, we're expect to wear our humility like hemp necklaces. Like we don't crave the lights, like the spoils of this American rat race simply bounce off our prophecy-plated chests. Like we stumble home late in the night, eyes yawning shut, and still scavenge for a working pen to jot down the thoughts of our day, so that our words won't live in infamy.

Well, hey. Fame. Sounds peachy.