I Knew That At Least A Few

One Of The Things My Service In Iraq Did Give Me Was This Freedom From Fear Of Failure Or Any Kind Of Expectations That I Had To Take A Standard Path.

It's Not Just: You Get Off The Plane, You're Back Home, Everything's Fine. Maybe The Physical Danger Ends, But Soldiers Are Still Deeply At Risk Of Being Injured In A Different Way.

The War Tried To Kill Us In The Spring. As Grass Greened The Plains Of Nineveh And The Weather Warmed, We Patrolled The Low-slung Hills Beyond The Cities And Towns. We Moved Over Them And Through The Tall Grass On Faith, Kneading Paths Into The Windswept Growth Like Pioneers. While We Slept, The War Rubbed Its Thousand Ribs Against The Ground In Prayer.

There Are Definitely Connections Between Poems, But I Wanted Each To Stand On Its Own. I Guess It Goes Back To The Idea Of Trying To Zoom In And Out, And To Modulate, So There Are Different Ways Of Looking At Any Experience For The Reader. Even Having Short Poems And Long Poems - There Has To Be Some Kind Of Variation In The Experience Of Reading As A Whole.

I've Been Writing Poems And Stories Since I Was About 13.