I'm A Morning Person!

Being a poet, a morning person, and a morning runner creates strange…fusions…

One July morning while I was running, I saw a peculiarly graceful black earthworm on the sidewalk in front of me. But when I bent down to observe and internalize his undulant fluency, which reminded me strangely of a line of verse, he coiled into a writhing ball---almost proto-strike posture. It was only then that it dawned on me that this was no earthworm but a baby snake. When I backed off, he continued his trek uninhibited, and I imagined life could be treacherous for a baby snake, whether he peregrinates in iambic pentameter or anapestic trimeter.

# posted by ali @ 1:13 PM 0 Comments

Manic Multitasking Bus Driver in the Morning: This gentleman qualifies for superhero, in my opinion. He is the best driver---attentive to the road and ever-changing traffic scene and brakes smoothly at each stop to pick up passengers---no slamming of brakes and throwing passengers out of their seats. He also waits until all passengers who have just boarded are seated before pulling out into traffic again.

The kicker is that while this guy is navigating the bus, he is also eating a breakfast croissant, tackling the morning newspaper’s crossword puzzle, listening to NPR on the radio, watering his plant, reading the latest National Geographic, and conversing about baseball with the passenger beside him. Definitely an American original…

# posted by ali @ 2:00 PM 0 Comments

Mornings make me feel like a rock star. Between the endorphins, the caffeine, and my natural affinity for the hours between four a.m. and noon, my body, imagination, and intellect are aswagger---raunchy, wild-eyed, and energetic as the stage personas of Janis Joplin, Mick Jagger, and Creedence Clearwater; rambunctiously rapscallion as Errol Flynn, Johnny Depp, or Rasputin; I am a mystic of hyperactive, ferret-like proclivities; a world-class athlete, a starship at warp speed; a swashbuckling, omniscient, omnipotent uber-borg---eager and able to assimilate everyone and everything, antemeridian invincible that I am, into my writing.

# posted by ali @ 7:23 AM 0 Comments

Admittedly, I am a morning person---at my best between the hours of 4 a.m. and 12 noon. My daily exercise consists of a pre-dawn run outside from 4 to 5:30 in the morning. The full moon, as dark clouds flood and recede over it, presents a phantasmagoric kaleidoscope of countenances to my perfervid morning imagination…A year-round Halloween…

First it glows lyrically gothic, a Victorian widow in mourning clothes and veil, who metamorphoses into a grizzled, furrow-browed mobster or worried Wall Street executive, newly indicted. The furrows evolve toward the funny face in the children’s game of iron filings manipulated by a magnetic wand---a Groucho Marx or Charlie Chaplin with antic moustache, to which storm clouds add a false nose and thick, black rimmed spectacles…

Then more somber, the comedians morph to the mustached countenance of a young Wyatt Earp, solemn, stern-faced, considerably more courageous and steady-handed than his enemies, striding to his legendary destiny through the dusty streets of Tombstone with his brothers and Doc Holliday as they head to the shootout near the O.K. Corral…

The next second the moon roars into the striped head of an albino Bengal tiger, which immediately shrinks to the classic black mask of a purloining, mischievous raccoon until the moon sizzles, scored black like the catfish filet from a picnic barbecue grill…

Labels: morning images, morning imagination, morning moon, morning person, morning run

# posted by ali @ 8:56 AM 0 Comments