from
I Stand Stubborn Before the Plunger
July 2004 - August 2006
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   If you have faithfully read my ramblings and been keen to notice the dates for the volumes, you'll notice that there was a 7 month gap between the last
volume and this one.  It started as a hiatus, but turned into a time when writing just wasn't possible amidst a full time job, full time classes, and a dying
mother.  Even though it took two years to write this current volume, in a period where it seemed writing was inescapable, those two years, and all the editing
and time spent with theses poems resulted in some of my best work to date.  There's still romantic palpitations, bitterness, distrust, and frivolity, but there's
also political and social commentary pieces (something I've always wanted to write effectively, but could never manage)...and it took a long time to get these
pieces just right, and that's how I like it.  Poems from this collection were the source of my fourth book.
 Inspired by my friend, Andi, a person constantly on the move, whose mind never stops for self-reconciliation nor sanity, Still Frame is a poem that
caught her in a quiet moment, which exposed her true beauty to me.  Here, her situation acts as metaphor to comment on the all-too hasty pace at which we
all live, and how that, and only that, affords the possibilities for such tender, still moments.  Canvas, which originated from the middle line and grew in
both directions, a vine of my subconscious art-history lessons, is fairly self-evident in terms of meaning, but the weaving and understanding of all the in-jokes
is a feat in such a small poem.  One of the first political pieces in this volume, In Lieu of Apologies, deals with the disappointment Condoleezza was
after Colin's resignation.  Initiation deals with peoples' attitudes towards the less than fortunate, bums.  Here, this poem hypothysizes transition, what
exactly it takes to go from becoming homeless to being homeless.  A now infamous signature piece, Snatch Trap started as a joke and then demanded to
be expanded into a larger joke.  I complied, and, in return, it determined the cover for "Words that Should Never be Said (...to a woman)."  Confessions
of a Tailgater, a very fun piece to write and hear, rants from the mind of a New Jersey driver with a lead foot whose name will be withheld to protect
the innocent as well as his own ass.  One of the best longing/lonely poems I've written to date, Homeless puts the Id in its place, making the speaker's loss
of love as innocent as crying for attention and as hurtful as being abandoned.  Foolish, another bit of social commentary, points out the uselessness of
protective re-naming (ie political correctness) in the face of  human nature.  It is spoken as a father watching his child playing, who is doing everything that
has been done wrong, wrong again.  Finally, Proposal, a poem very dear to my heart, is a desperate love song of determination and sacrifice.