Sigh.

Good recital. Linus and Lucy was flawless. Our best run-through ever. Even in practice. It was amazing. Liebesfreud, as I had foreseen, could have been better. I started too fast. But it was still nice and I feel like I had a good, congenial stage presence that made up for it. I was sandwiched between two guys who are both Juilliard-capable. They were amazing. I feel pretty good.

Also, I wrote a poem today entitled "The Ballad of the Free Verse Flamingo." I got on this weird performing rush and went all loopy. I love performing. Anyway, I was kind of in this weird funk and I wrote this poem. See what you can make of it.

The Ballad of the Free Verse Flamingo

There’s a lonely flamingo on roller skates
Skating dejectedly down the beach
Not really caring if people are staring
But wanting something far out of his reach
Something he wished for but never gained
A rhyme or a meter could not be obtained
Onward he rolls in the tropical sun
Awkward and leggy and only the one.

When the flamingo was young and a child,
He looked round the world and saw wonderful things
He wished he could capture the power and might
But sonnets and cinquains would shackle his wings.
So out of a dumpster behind Steakhouse Nine
He pulled out some skates and he found it felt fine
To breeze over sidewalks with steps of his own
So he and his poems have never once flown.

Tomorrow he knows that his knees will be sore
It might just be worth it to make them all see
That birds of some feathers can break out and show
That verses are verses, and couplets aren’t free
He’ll skate in Miami and Tampa and on
He’ll swim through the gulf and then skate in San Juan
And all through the world the flamingo will skate
For as a flamingo, free verse is his fate.

I feel that it was a good exercise. And, I mean, it's about a flamingo! Really. But I don't know if I really like it. It's not something I would read. Why am I publishing this? This is ridiculous. But I dunno, I guess I want someone else to read it and tell me I'm not crazy so I can move on. It was kind of a scandal, poetically. Just weird. Okay. I'm done.