Just Poems

This book, these poems, were written during four confusing and painful years that began with the end of a 30-year marriage then sudden loss of a 17-year career due to a mental breakdown and the result of destructive addictions. It depicts a search for meaning in the interaction of self, life, and divinity. Just Poems is a journal of mental illness, depression, self-harm (cutting), alcoholism, suicide, and abusive relationship, and spiritual crisis. It is not all darkness though. Two sections of the book contain various random poems of a more lighthearted nature. These are not my poems. They belong to you, the reader. How you respond to a poem, what it means for you, is your experience that is different than my experience writing it. Also, they do not exist unto themselves. Each one is like a tree unaware that it is. When a poem is ready for birth, it talks to me, and I write it. It is just a poem, like a tree is just a tree. There are no good or bad treesjust trees, just poems.