On my 35th Birthday

How much have I changed since I wrote this at UT in the early 90’s, and how much have I changed since the last revision in ’99?

I have come a long way since my Bachelor’s, I regret every wasted opportunity but at long last I know the reasons for my loneliness and isolation. When I think back on those desperate days- my desperation- my emotional and mental anguish while I destroyed my body in safe sugar coated fashion; I wonder now how I survived. That and why my mother didn’t have me committed.

So here I am on the eve of my 35^th Birthday rewriting poems that once tore at my soul and cried out of my entire being. I am no longer depressed- though I still have depression. I am no longer the poet I thought myself to be. I would like to believe that I became more than I was- that I grew and matured at long last into the man that I always wanted to be and feared all the same.

This month I turned 38, and again here I sit now at my laptop pulling the final forms for print. I dread having to get all of the poems into universal font size. This compilation is in rough form, so endure knowing the book will look better. I hope the other poems in the reworking folder will join these soon. I cannot bear them in their current state so they remain unread unpublished.

For me the poems have changed because I, and the way I look at the world have changed.

For most of you, since you have never seen them before, it will be a new experience.

To all of you look for the deeper meaning rather than scratching but the surface of the rhyme!

Today, at least by American reckoning I am 43. Even the idea and meaning of all this has changed.

Blogging these works has changed them as they continue to change me.