Hey LAYDEES!

I got somethin for ya!

And with a smile like that you know it's gonna be gooood, right?

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

HA! I tease but I tell no lies! Word.

Word to your beautiful mothers of course!

LOL! Excuse me while I entertain myself! With ANY luck maybe I can make you smile as well.

Let's get to the point of all this tail wagging, shall we?

One thing I did productively this weekend was crack open my LAST poetry notebook for the first time in ages. I did this on the ride home from the island. It was a fairly crazy experience! I haven't looked in that thing for years, hell I've HARDLY written in it FOR YEARS. Which is terribly sad to say. Lemme make it clear why...

My poetry notebook was once the only thing I ever wrote in. From the time I got my first one (which I also just opened and looked at for the first time in YEARS!) in 1995 to the time I bought the last one, I ALWAYS had a notebook that I took with me everywhere! How far I have fallen. How far have I fallen? Lemme tell ya!

It used to be that I would FILL a notebook like the one I have now EVERY YEAR! Maybe every year and a half, but that's still Quite a bit of writing in not a ton of time. This notebook I have now I bought shortly after I moved to Oregon, in 2005. Since then, In the course of FIVE FREAKING YEARS, I have filled maybe a fifth of it! Freaking SAD.

Here's the good news though, the part that involves you wonderful feminine figures in my life. It turns out a lot of the stuff in there is basically LOVE POETRY! Yeah. Wow. Not something I write often, not something I really like to write at all, but the first few pages of that notebook have SEVERAL pieces, some of which I barely remember writing! Some of which I may not have even shared! And you know what, by my estimation, they're not half bad.

I am kinda hoping you will be so kind as to give me a more accurate opinion of their merit or quality though. You think you could do that? I would appreciate it. I would love it if you didn't hold back your reactions, IF you have any. It would help me know which ones to keep on file/shop for publication and which ones to...donate to the internet! Free of Charge! Out of the kindness of my heart of course. ;)

Seriously though, if you feel it, if it's got somethin, lemme know, someway somehow. I don't care. It'd be cool know which ones pop AND it'd be cool to know who likes what as well :). I'll start posting them on my new blog soon. And Mr. Guys....Try Not to HATE! Just TRY. :)

As for why I was writing so much like that at that point in time.....It's hard to say. Looking at it now, looking at those pages, at the version of me who was writing those things and feeling all of that, it looks like my heart was going crazy. And I kinda say that with sadness. My heart was just going nuts with emotions and overflowing feeling. NO WONDER I wanted out of America so bad! God I was a mess. Part of it, however, was cuz I came to Portland a still-wounded animal from the relationship that burned the hell out of me in Phoenix. I wasn't over her, not at all, and being that it was months later, I WANTED to BE! And So I was throwing myself, my heart at the window of any woman who paid me attention and calmed me with a kind tender kiss. Half of those windows weren't even open. Think I even broke one or two. Damn fool I was.

BUT! At least I was writing. At least I was writing. My saving grace. Literally. My saving grace. And here I am, closing one of the biggest circles of my life, able to firm-footedly share the turbulent times of my heartfelt existence one poem or one story at a time. Not with pride, not with shame, just with earnestness, with a somber look in my eye that says, "look, see what I used to be? So wild and weak. That was me, beautiful and sad at the same time. I am not that way anymore. But it doesn't scare me to remember, especially if it doesn't scare you."

thank you for reading