from
Excrementitious
November 1998 - May 1999
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    I thought this was bound to be my bestest volume ever!  I was in love for the first time in my life, jobs were going ok, writing seemed to be coming along
nicely, and I had some courses that actually let me enjoy being in college.  I was gonna be THE SHIT!  But that's what everything turned out to be.  Half of
this volume was written before realizing my love...and half of it was written after things just couldn't work any more.  For a volume that was gonna be the
best, I rarely look back to these pages, and when I do it's with a great deal of embarrassment.  Fortunately, not everything was bad.  There were a few
worthwhile poems, and many that I want to re-work later.  Poems from this collection were later integrated into my first book.
    One day, while working at a local Mailboxes Etc., a very un-busy business, I got to reflecting on a recent relationship-gone-flat.  In my meditation, I
found Clarissa's Ship, a poem described as being "so right in its imagery...so evocative of the feelings of the pair" (Jim Wheldon).  I can't remember
exactly why I wrote Answers, but it was touched upon in an interview for New Jersey Poetry Voices,  The Rock, the Lake, & the Ripple was
another poem spawned from reflection.  Reflection, pool, water...rocks, events...pool + rocks =.  And then we come to Grapes.  This is a very unlikely
poem of great majesty, dreamed up while watching to 6 year old running around the ankles of a very tired mother wile I was, again, working at Mailboxes
Etc.  Ok, majesty, no...pubescent horniness? Yeah...probably more of that.