Scenes the Writer Shows

Scenes the Writer Shows {forty-one places a poem can go} is a collection of poems from travels and experiences. They describe situations and moments in life (mine or someone else's) that were either positive or negative. A few poems deal with teenage angst and issues of personal experience either in my own or someone else's life. "The Hustler," for example, loosely mirrors my life and experience as a disabled person. It is a montage of my years living in Downtown Minneapolis, riding public transit and adapting to urban life. Word-play, meter and music used often to create images that will draw the reader into the poem. For example, in "Waxing on Flames," I tried to create the image of a bonfire by a river with young scouts growing up as flames nurture them along:

"We were young and at the mercy
of our means and we flung ourselves
Down upon the flames for what
we knew felt right; I bridled from
Those heated pains that boiled
and tested me; and knelt down to
Pray upon the iron grate while
Moonlight splintered trees to shake
Ripe, fierce winds I'd learned to hate;"

My poems travel to England, to Scotland and Wales. They go to the Mid-east and to Norway. They go from my home in Minneapolis to New York and Tennessee.