Sometimes I write not-poems.

One of my guilty secrets: I, with a barely-there grasp of syntax and structure, write.

I’m usually the attempted artist. I’ll get a flash in my mind of an image I need to try and capture — and scribble, and strive, and often toss in frustration.

But every once in a while, the flash comes in letters. I’ll scrawl these little snippets of thought onto a page, trying to nail down odd words in the odd moments of the day. They’ll sit in folders, in hard-clutched notebooks, in the corners of my computer. They’ll sit in silence.

I’ve thought for many years that if I ever tried to collect my disconnected words into a volume that I would call them “not-poetry,” because surely they couldn’t be “REAL POEMS.” I’d illustrate them and send them into the world under a pen name, and if anybody tried to damn my silly words it wouldn’t matter; they’re not real.

Fuck that traitorous line of thought. Even if they are not-poems, they are-mine. My thoughts. My sometimes frightening, sometimes charming, weird thoughts.

I’m not a writer.

But I’ll write anyway.

I’ll share these strange little words with you. Poems and story shards, old and new. The strange, the sweet, the spiteful — beloved, belabored, twisted, true. And mine.