Statement du' Jour   Dec 02, 2005

The work included on this website archive represents, in part twenty years of self-expression, reflection and observation. Rather than launch into a dramatic monologue that might be given by a dying blond "Replicant" as heard in the finale of Blade Runner, I can only remark that I lack the discipline, inclination and disposition that cultivating a widely spread cultural exposure demands of a creative individual with "aspirations." I find most self-promotion at this somatic level of expression pretentious, vulgar and distasteful.

Perhaps it is a matter of the basic question of why an individual succumbs to the desire to create in the first place. Whatever my talent is or can be defined as a poet, it certainly is not as a "purveyor" of self. I am haunted by the question; if one creates for the market place, then do they simply become another "product" for consumption in that market place?

I know more about what I am not, than what I am. I am not successful. I am an obscure enigma. I do not write for the intellectual. I write for you. You who know what is like to not understand this modern life. I write for the laborer, the journeyman, the ones who through the sheer effort of daily life support the framework of this culture's humanity. I write out of pure blind desire, fear and addiction to a way of living enforced upon a populous who has so little control of so much to do with the basic dignity of their lives. While I believe in the value of the everyday life and dreams, I do not celebrate or promote the cruel, mundane or banal.

I do not have an all inclusive, all purpose, glib sentence to describe my work and its purpose. Any "poetica" or "Musa" I am able to convey is wrenched away under duress from a brutal insane system which has slipped free of any moral or rational moorings.

I create from memory, dreams and the vast over-flowing junk yard of images and mutated desires created by Madison Avenue and Hollywood under the watchful eye of Corporate America.

It would be disingenuous for me to represent myself as one who doesn't care or want approval and recognition from an audience. I want what any artist wants, but I do demand at the very least some basic degree of honesty from all concerned (including myself) regarding the depth and worth of creativity.

A walk through these words will not be a dry one. You will get wet, dirty, warm or cold, you might laugh or cringe, maybe a little eyebrow raising, a shoulder shrugging. But if I remind you of one thing that you know is true, either by blessed or painful experience or you take one of these poems or stories and insist someone else read it, then I've done my job.

Always bearing in mind the words of Jerzy Kosinski, "insufficient talent is nature's cruelest gift."