Tuesday, Apr. 01, 2003 | 11:14 AM

I�ve spent the morning not doing a single bit of work at all. Nothing. But I don�t feel it�s been a waste. I�ve been reading poetry (�cause it�s poetry months as someone reminded me) and partaking in my own methods of protesting US policy�namely reading the ACLU website and sending letters to my senators and representatives about issues I think are important�i.e. which judges are being nominated to the appellate courts, that amendment to the constitution which has been discussed, you know the one that will explicitly identify marriage as a relationship between people of the opposite sex.

We are living in very scary times. And for the first time, I think that Nader and Michael Moore may have been wrong when they stated there�s no difference between the democrats and the republicans. The dems are pansies and they�ll roll over for a lot, but I seriously doubt we�d be murdering Iraqis right now if Gore were in office, and there is a very strong chance that if Sandra Day O�Connor and William Rhenquist retire from the Supreme Court, Bush will nominate a couple of strongly anti-choice judges, which would tilt the conservative bent of the court even farther to the right. And it really and truly would not surprise me if Roe v. Wade was repealed. I mean think about it�all us left leaners would have on the bench would be Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stevens, and Souter. Am I forgetting anybody? That�s pretty fucking scary. Scalia and Thomas are gunning for Roe.

Christicles, I have such a bad feeling about the state of American politics. I wish that the Blue States�you know, the urban populated ones that went Gore�s way, could secede from the rest of the union. The reds can have the god damned Homeland Security Task Force and a moratorium on abortion and they can have the Death Penalty. And they can go right ahead and bomb whomever they want and piss of the rest of the world.

But anyway�

Besides all that, I�ve been reading poems. Poems make me feel like wine makes me feel, without the hangovers. SoI gotta remember to read poems for an hour or so every day, and maybe then I�ll drink less.

I love Anne Sexton so much. The last two lines on the following poem just fucking kill me.

For My Lover, Returning To His Wife

She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.
She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.
Let's face it, I have been momentary.
vA luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.
She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,
has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,
done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.
She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.
I give you back your heart.
I give you permission --
for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound --
for the burying of her small red wound alive --
for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stocking,
for the garter belt, for the call --
the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.
She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.