Fire in the Heart

The poems presented here represent a first attempt at finding an audience broader than the small circle of my friends. Most of the poems were written between 1995 and 2010. Fire in the Heart is a title of special significance. The suggestion of a passionate creative struggle in that part which has long been considered the symbolic center of the human soul should be apparent. There is also a meaning which exists in stark physical terms. At the age of 36, I had a heart disease which turned my heart into useless fluttering pulp. The disease, myocardial sarcoidosis, caused my heart to stay inflamed, chronically, as though it were fighting some sort of infection -- as though it were on fire. I have a new heart now, a transplanted heart, and while the destructive inflammation of my disease has departed along with my failing native heart, my soul has remained intact though still inflamed. It is consumed, more than ever, by an acute and disturbing awareness of the finite nature of our human existence which I beat back through the affirmation of creativity. Such is the nature of my writing.