It's Just Words

In 2011, I turned 51. In September of that year, I woke up one morning with a dream fresh in my mind. I sat down at my computer trying to capture the dream in words. I wrote it down in the form of a poem, but I wasn’t sure what to do with the poem once I finished it. I used to write poetry, but I hadn’t written a poem for twenty years. I was pretty sure that I still had all of my old College and High School poetry somewhere, but I wasn’t sure where they were stored. After some research, I decided that I’d start an online blog. That new poem, based upon my dream, became the first post to this blog.

So, what about this blog, “It’s Just Words” about? This is just a place for my words, of course. I don’t have any lofty goals other than to collect all of my writings together. Mostly it consists of poetry, but some other stuff that i’ve written has been included. The posts are categorized. Poems are further broken out by distinct periods in my life (High School, College, etc) when they were written. Songs are broken into the distinct years when I composed and recorded the original music.

• Poetry written after starting this blog (at 51)
• Poetry written when in College and as a Co-op Student (1978 to 1984)
• Poetry written while in High School (1976 to 1978)
• Songs composed in 1981
• Songs composed in 1982
• Songs composed in 1983
• Songs composed in 1984
• Songs composed in 1987
• Dreams
• lists
• life stories

I started writing poetry my sophomore year in senior high school. Initially inspired by my pretty teacher and a fascination for the alliteration of Anglo Saxon poetry. I quickly found my own voice writing simple verse filled with alliteration and rhyme. As you read my latest poems, you will note that my poetic style has never really changed over the years. After High School, I kept writing until a few years after I graduated from college. The last few years of college, I also put some of my poetry to music and recorded it. In college at ISU, I took a creative writing course. My professor, Karl Barnebey, instructed us to write as much as we could, even simple little things like lists, a daily diary and descriptions of dreams. Writing down my dreams was a lot of of fun, so I’ve made some efforts to continue to capture dreams for this blog.

I also want to include bits and pieces of stories from my life. Perhaps not of much general interest, but rather written with my kids or grand-kids as the intended audience. Hopefully, they will want to read them someday. I can’t vouch for the veracity of my memory, since I’ve already discovered major mistakes in my recollection after we found my old writings. So, the life stories are what I remember, not necessarily what really happened.

My plan was to start by posting old writings, but with revisions when I felt something was just too bad to post in its original form. This blog is more of a collection than a linear effort. Posts are categorized but are not in any specific order. Older works are mixed in with newer works. I also often go back and revise or expand older posts as often as I publish new ones. You will notice that I sometimes comment on my own posts, giving the original version or detailing just the changes or giving some background to the post.

There are some good, some bad (okay, maybe more bad), and some immature and embarrassing posts. I don’t promise entertainment. I don’t promise quality. I don’t even promise to keep posting. All I can promise is that these are my words. They are little bits and pieces of me. They mean something to me. They may or may not mean something to you. It’s just words, folks, but they’re my words. So, let the reader beware.

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