I love poetry.  I love the way that carefully crafted words can form mental imagery or conjure feelings/emotions.  I’ve been writing poems since I was in my early teens.  A lot of my early stuff was handled under rhyming schematics – and trying to force a handful of words together while attempting to maintain those rhyming schematics didn’t do much for the overall feeling of the work.  Then I started working on poetry using a free-form schematic – no rhyming – just the words as they came into my head.  And my poetry started developing the depth that I had wanted it to have.  I was able to use words as subtle tools instead of coupling devices.  And I was able to use the light touch of word-play as a means to pour my soul into what I wrote.

Most of my work resides in one of two leather-bound books.  While I do the heavy-lifting of my writing at the computer, the finished works find their way into a hand-written journal.  I can’t really explain why I do it – it just feels “right”.  Looking through those two journals is like taking a step back into my own life.  I can see where I make my own internal changes, where my focus becomes slightly different…in a manner of speaking I’m able to see the course of the river that is who I am.  A few of my pieces of poetry have touched on what drives me forward on this path of artistry.  Why I write what I write about.  Mostly, its me asking the G-ds for some peek into that spark that pushes me along that particular pathway of writing.  Why poetry – nearly thirty years later – still plays a major role in the quiet journal of my life.  However, over the past two years, I’ve managed to locate that curtain, and pull it to the side for a peek of my own. 

The outdoors.  The trees.  The animals that share space with me during my walks.  These have an increasingly greater meaning and prevalence within my life.  I don’t consider myself to be overly concerned with politics – but every single time I see something political that has a direct effect on these things, I get stirred up about it.  And I write.  No one ever sees this stuff but me.  But its there.  There to remind me.  Remind me of who exactly I am and where I am wanting to take my daily moments in life.

Some people journal….I write poetry.