A month ago I said I wasn’t going to do this again. I’m supposed to be writing a new novel and creating the next issue of Autumn Sky Poetry and revising two other novels so I can send them out and make piles of money (ok, just kidding about the $, unfortunately) and. . . well. You get the idea. But then I hit on this great idea: why don’t I write poems that are completely self-indulgent? I mean, for years now I’ve been writing to figure something out (meter, sonnets, alliteration, etc.), or to prove a point (prose poems? hell yeah!), or to learn the discipline of writing every day. I did it. I learned a lot. But I’d never really written just because. What would happen if I did that? Hmm. You’re not supposed to be self-indulgent when you write, everyone says. I can hear a little voice chiding me for it even now — uh excuse me for a moment. . .

[Shut UP stupid little voice, I spit on you! Ptew! *sounds of a scuffle* Take that!]

So! starting tomorrow I will attempt to write a collection of poems tentatively titled: Ballroom – a memoir. It’s about dance (in case that wasn’t obvious). I began taking ballroom dance lessons about two and a half years ago, and I love it in a way I never expected. It’s not like I didn’t already have an art that I loved, so I didn’t really approach dance as anything other than a fun hobby, and then it reared up and bit me on the a**.

Anyway. We’ll see what happens, yes?

I’ll be posting at Poets.org’s Discussion Forums. Click here to see the poems, one per day all month long.
Egad.