Way Past Midnight On The Other Side Of Real Estate

Most of the work that appears in this volume was published by online literary e-zines. But there are quite a few poems included here that were published in print magazines, too. This collection goes back over three decades, and this time block includes a period where there was no Internet, only print magazines. I wanted to get together a good, strong sampling of my poetic work to date – published with a sprinkling of brand new work – under cover. By the way, this collection ranges from metered and measured verse to experimental pieces. Some prose and poetry is stark-raving serious; other pieces are in the experimental or absurdist style. There are political poems here, working-class poems, and love poems. No poetry collection would be a poetry collection without at least a sprinkling of love poems, after all. There are poems harboring fears and resentments (but no hate poems); and I've also included some nature poems and even some working and industrial poems. Just about any sort of poem one would dream of seeing is contained in this poetry collection. It’s not really a commercial pursuit, yet neither is it predominantly academic. And it's not bubblegum verse with purple cheesy rhymes and lines. It’s not written for a mass audience or the general public.

Who did I write these poems for? Well, I wrote them for me.

Really, there is not another person in the world a poet writes for except the person who's clicking and clacking the lines down an electronic, white, empty document.

I think everyone should try to write some poetry. I think many are intimidated, perhaps even embarrassed, about taking on a task of penning some poetry. Poetry can be the bird on the wing or the turkey on the table. It can be a warm summer day or the bleakness of a cold winter wind or a hard, scorching sun. It’s not something that can be measured by a continuum or pigeonholed into a strict discipline. It’s as airy as a spring breeze and as confining as the stale air of a prison cell. It’s everything and nothing. It’s all and nothing, but never all or nothing. Poetry is not the zero-sum game that modern society has seemed to create for all modern forms of expression. It’s nice to consider yourself a poet even if you cannot write very well. I was a teacher, yes, I taught English on a part-time basis at a number of community colleges, state colleges, and state universities for over a decade. I usually had a full-time job, too, at either a daily newspaper or a business journal when I taught college English courses. Being a teacher, I think that some of our most accomplished writers were at one time very poor writers. They taught themselves by reading, writing, making mistakes and even were scoffed at and ridiculed. But through trial and error and a lot of hard work, little mileposts are passed and a writer's prowess is earned. What kills me is that a lot of people say they're going to write but never do - these days, the best thing to do is sit on a desk chair behind a computer terminal and write something. Anything. That's the first step, anyhow. If you can't afford a laptop or a PC, start writing in notebooks or legal pads. Paper and ink are cheap but your thoughts and feelings aren't! So capture them while they are fresh in your mind.

These days, I sort of keep poetry writing as a guilty pleasure. I used to write a lot more poetry when I was younger. These days, I normally write fiction or as a freelance journalist. Anyhow. I've never had a complete collection of my work published and although virtually everything in "Way Past Midnight on the Other Side of Real Estate" has been previously published by print and online magazines, I'm very excited to share with the world a complete collection of the work I've collected over several decades.