Grad school was a bad time to discover
I was burned out on reading and writing
Had only a desire for playing music
Into the gray light hours
The sun coming up to signal
I’d better coffee up my beer brain
Head for class poorly prepared
Too welled down in the morass
To see that devil painted on my wall
Smiling at the novel he was doing on me
My story arc pointing downward fast
My life then set down as a dreadful draft
Writing the worst essays of my life
Barely tolerating reading even a newspaper
Stupefied at finding most lectures boring
Struck dumb by the quality of class discussions
That super student left behind in Honolulu
His set broken down on the last day of senior year
I should have minded the gap but fell in
Should have taken a year off to recuperate
Should have . . .
All that’s ancient history now
No time for regrets over . . .
All griefs but blunt darts thrown at invisible boards
Targets melted to nothingness in the mists of time
Lanning Lee 