Back Blogging w/2 poems

July 11, 2013 Hello, dear friends. It has been too long since I have written to you, and I apologize. Life is good, and busy, and active. Summer in Lakeside means taking grandson Xander down to the lake as often as possible and playing in the water, while fitting writing poetry into the schedule as best I can. I have been focused on the poetry heavily of late, with a new challenge on Helium for July plus other submissions. It has been very gratifying. I seem to be building a small but very loyal following among fellow poets on the site, and one of my poems has been featured on Helium’s Featured Stories link on their front page for the fourth time in less than two months. This one is called “Sadness.” Check it out on the Helium website, www.helium.com or search Helium – where knowledge rules. It feels so good when the writing is going well, and the irony is that I don’t have enough time to write about it! I am also trying to settle in on which project I want to tackle next in the long term. There are several candidates to choose from that already are in some degree of development, but none has grabbed me by the throat and demanded “WRITE ME NOW!” That may be why the poetry has absorbed me so greatly at the moment – poems are short and do not take a great deal of time to write, although to be good at it one still must exercise all the constraint and imagination (an interesting combination – worthy of a poem) required by a longer, book-length project. It’s all good. Let me share a couple of poems today that went on the Helium Coffee House blog: //Student// /I’m still learning. /Similes and metaphors /Play inside my brain /Like matchbox men /Engaged in war games /Oblivious to time constraints /Of ignoble history, /Guns drawn on cavemen, /Knights and cowboys /Side by side, /Pterodactyls on the wing /Soaring dragons, fire ready, /Words cleft from their creator, /Student conduit busy /Regurgitating. //Tusk// /You want me just to go away, /To wander into the woods, /Curl up, wait, and die. /I did my bit, /A career as a delivery boy /Buying more than he could afford /On credit, /Mortgaged to the hilt /Before the bubble burst /And desperation served notice, /Evicting the American Dream. /I grew old /And had the nerve to escape /Your demographics, /And you’d just as soon /I took my trunks lightly packed /And wandered off /To the land of the dead, /Burial ground, /Leaving my tusks behind.