“Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile.”

– Ray Bradbury – 

Writing has always been important to me. Through elementary school and early middle school I wrote countless stories as part of school projects and even used a pseudonym to credit the “by:” line. I was so self conscious of writing that I was borderline ashamed to admit it was like therapeutic self realization and comfort. Looking back, I can see that kind of self-pressure was definitely related to being so intently focused on sports at such a young age: it was a vacuum of gender pressure and focus that didn’t seem to allow for that type of interest. But who the fuck is thinking about those things at that age?

I digress.

Poetry is something I started to write when I was ten and eleven. For girls I was romancing over, about wanting to be the guy people looked to, and soccer, and even about falling in love. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “if I can’t say these things to this girl, I can at least write them”. So, like most young hopeless romantics in training, I turned my sorrows into scribbles: tracing out an idea of myself and the world around me that was looking for some interpretive truth under everything.

Not a whole lot has changed in sixteen years. If anything, that search has only been compounded: some relationships, traveling, cool jobs and getting fired from others, moving cross-country with someone that leaves you, career crisis, student loans, dog ownership, and having friends.

Ya know: life.

That said, what I write is often very confessional and personal; it’s a way I can at least share what I’m feeling when I feel that speech isn’t enough. It’s not always about a girl these days, but everything I write is rooted in a sense of my emotional truth and most honest self.

I write every day; force myself to create something in ink that feels definitive. And I feel deeply that looking for those things every day and ensuring they’re expressed, in some form, is vital to legitimizing ourselves against the world.

With that in mind, I do hope you enjoy what you find; it’s my hope we can commune over life, here.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” – Hemingway.