So have a bunch of stuff that I’m not sure what to do with. Mostly old proto-poems/prose, things that I scratched out in the early parts of a struggle to see past the past and look toward the future again. Some of the stuff I wrote in what I call my ‘post-combat blues’ phase of life. It was a time in my life where I wasn’t sure where I fit. I had lost faith, lost hope, lost pride, lost my father, and my mind wrestled with my deployment to Afghanistan and a stint in the Army almost every moment of every day and night. Times were tough for me then.

I’ve been sitting on a lot of this stuff since 2007, I tried to edit them, tried to polish them for a long time but for the most part they’re the reflection of the struggle I was caught in. The struggle to be ok is a tough nut to crack for some of us. I think I’ll share some of my scratches on ocher that made me see my own humanity, that made me see horizons again in a time in my life when all I could see were storm clouds.

By posting them here I am freeing them from the cage of the hard drive they’ve sat in for years and freeing me from fretting and watching over them. Now they can be out of my hands. If these proto-poems/prose could hear I would tell them, “Fly free little words and thanks for starting me on a path to knowledge and helping me learn how to be ok with being me.”