Learning to try,
Where does my identity lie?
Finding myself again is hard,
Harder when I've raised my guard.
Trying to learn it's okay to be alone,
Spending this year on my own.

Writing,
Drawing and painting.
Woodworking,
Welding and making.
Circuitry,
Electronics and more.
Pneumatic, mechanic, IC chips galore.

***** in the veins,
skewed and torn.
Hangovers battled, and seemingly won...
...as the body grows numb...
...limbs waking in hazy hum.

Roll another,
Tobacco makes its mark—
Lungs defiled,
Body failing,
Cherries burn brightest in the dark.

Lets call some lucky,
That they knew from the start,
Yet I continued hoping,
He would come back and restart.

The years draw on,
The day the pickup drove away,
I screamed for him,
Did he hear? check the review mirror and then accelerate?

Children of my own, a wife, and a home.

5150,
It's waiting....
It's ready, patiently prone.

Context needed,
Needed for concepts to churn
Listen closely.
A decibel past a whisper —
A Truth heard from the urn.

Intimacy is not physicality.
Intimacy takes heartfuls of risky honesty.
Its essence is vulnerability -
an ability to offer the key to deep dignity
and entrust it by degree or in its entirety.

And listen carefully:
It's not limited to matrimony.
It's a delicacy available to anybody
and without it friendship is hollow
and fully half empty.

You don't care about

me, so I hope you have fun --


I am doing well.

A woman walks into a bar,
alone on a Friday night,
daring assumptions,
orders a pint
and gets out her book.
That's it.  There's nothing else to write.
What?  Not clichéd enough for you?

I love solos.  
The courage to stand out front, in front of those consigned to the choir, acknowledging the support they provide with a gracious wave, but not afraid to take the acclaim justly due, front stage.

I love solos.
They celebrate breakthrough, on cue drawing attention away from the typical duets, the quartets, the ensembles, tempering a tendency to celebrate humble, to focus on a singular achievement and an agreement that this is a voice worth listening to.

I love solos.
So step out, take a bow
and make it loud.