Free Poems
This page is dedicated to poems I have released to the public, free of charge, previously published either on this blog or elsewhere. If you become addicted, you can support your habit by writing to various literary magazines requesting my work be published. While this may be in poor taste, I find it an appropriate application of market principles.

Featured Poetry Online:
May 2016 featured poet at Contemporary American Voices.
“Recipe for an Appetizer” published in The Paragon.
“Impostor” published in Streetlight.
“The Integrity of Objects” published in oddball magazine.
“Black Coffee” published in Hoot.
“Strings” published in North of Oxford.
“The Heartwind” published in Mockingheart Review.
“Blackberries,” “Detour,” Here On Earth,” and “Ah, Life” published in Hedge Apple.
“Pedestrian” published in The Penmen Review.
“Amazzacaffe” and “Cobbler Gnomes” published in Modern American Poetry Review.

Prize Winners:
At Least I Tried —I kid you not, the title of a poem that won 2nd place in a contest at my alma mater

Meditations, Ruminations, Ovations:
Mining for Ore (inspired by The Hobbit, published on theonering.net)
Forsythia
Times I Have Let Out A Sigh of Disappointment
The Boy Who Never Laughed (from VerseWrights)
Week People (from VerseWrights)
Birds and Bees (from VerseWrights)
Birmingham Pigeons (from VerseWrights)
Comfort Zone (from VerseWrights)

Poems from my adolescence:
Seasons Change
Sapphire Stone—published in the inaugural issue of Brain of Forgetting: Stones
Kansas— on Dorothy, Oz
Arizona Day —an incident poem
Passing Pattern —a poem on the seasons

For my children:
Down in the Hemlocks—for my older son
Picking Blueberries at 3 Bird—for my older son
Bonsack—for my older son
Daddy Beard Owie Face—for my older son
Bed Made to Rest—a lullaby for my younger son

Devotion and Doxology:
The 23rd Digest: A Bicolonation of David

Parody, Pastiche, and Plain ol’ Imitation:
The Ryme of the Anglyng Touryst—you’re welcome, Coleridge
O The Places You Will Scuttle: The Lovesong of Henry Van Allen O’Shea—a Seuss/Eliot mashup
Refuse Avenue—a serious homage to Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row”

These Are Just Silly:
Bivuoac
All Three Names