Other Poetry

As we entered the new minimum I came to a crossroads. Writing poetry doesn’t pay the bills, I had a degree from a well-respected college but could not get published and didn’t have the money to continue to graduate school. If you don’t have Iowa or Texas to put as postbaccalaureate study in your bio you don’t get the door cracked. Now I have always been with JB when he said “I don’t want nobody give me nothing, just open up the door, I’ll get it myself”, but there were no open doors and I ended up end up as a cook in a second-rate bar in Baltimore City. This led to a lot of bad roads, late mornings and unholy nights. Out of it I ended up with a two daughters and a wife which is good but, it didn’t encourage me to pursue poetry because the people I surrounded myself with wouldn’t know a pantoum from a sestina. Now I am sans wife and raising two young girls, now I am ready after 10 years to get back in the word game in earnest. These poems are things written from the time I graduated college until the birth of my oldest. Some were going to be a book or cycle called History Of A Free People, some were experiments in forms, the rest have no home yet.

Ars Poetica
Ars Poetica II
Courting December
First Poem
In November solemn comfort will prevail
Last Night
Movement
Mushrooms After Heavy Rain
My Oppressors
November
On A Line From Neruda
Poem For Mandi
Poem For The Last Monday
Rainman
Saturday Morning 3 A.M.
Saturday Poem
Sumac Avenue
The Chase
The Grain
The Marquee
The Park
‘There are days I can sleep’
‘This poem is a rock’
Tide
Waiting On The Manifest