Oppressive dry heat. To lean forward meant sweat rolling along my forehead, only to stream and occult my gaze of the war machine before me. She had a temporary home in a worn out hangar. Despite her disheveled appearance from her regular upkeep, she looked as fast and vicious stationary as she did when screamed down the runway. My ratchet spins between her struts for hours trying desperately to place an inducer in her wheel well. Time erases my memory of my height and hers. I stand to observe my small victory. She violently kisses me on the head. Smack!

And good evening! I've been kicking around this site for the past couple of weeks. Truthfully, my writing style is still rather amateur. I'm used to writing papers but since I left college, I have not flexed the writing muscle in my brain in quite some time, especially in a creative writing environment. I'm looking to try new things and see how they fair as well as read the works of other folks. Hopefully I get to know more of you. Again, good evening!

I came on to this written scheme afraid

Now force myself, I forge these words on page

A first in plain view to assuage my need

A skill I build with type, these words I feed

Wanton critiques of which improves my craft

Line to line, design by sign, build one draft

Saving a draft then draft again more word

In hopes I prove my word is made and heard

So to all that may read of what I send

I bid adieu on to you thus I end

I have written poems for people but never publicly. The case for writing a poem usually relies on how deliberate it is compare to an essay. Simply writing can always have a pinch of free flow to it that is far more liberating save for grammatical and social conventions. Poems on the other hand tend to have rules, rules that readers should be able to understand.

I've only ever attempted writing one poem with no rhyme. I hated it. This isn't to say they're bad. Rhymes make poem rules easier because the instructions are simple. A less understood part of rhyming would be the rhythm in a poem, otherwise the rhymes won't work.

I can respect a non-rhyming poem which can masterfully convey its rules to the reader. A poem that does this well tends to make for better art... in my humble opinion.

I must be one of those grey standard faces that Mr. Roethke was talking about in his poem Dolor. However, I'm not in an office building surrounded by coworkers all pushed in at their own desks typing away, sending notices, answering calls. I'm just simply sitting in the dining room with three bucks in my pocket, no modes of transportation, with equally poor yet busy friends and oppressively stuck with a total lack of imagination.

There is a compulsion to write something. Perhaps it'll kill some time before my ride shows up and I head in to work all night wasting away for that extra handful of peanuts next week. 

If this were my house, the clock ticking above the table would go straight in the trash. The homeowner's sister insists on having it there and loading it with a new battery whenever it croaks. I presume she thinks the second hand is actually making the rest of the clock function... but it doesn't. The clock is broken. As the old saying goes "a broken clock is at least right twice a day".

The clock goes no where, but I've been here long enough to watch the shadows of the trees outside, oscillate about their source as the sun drags through the sky. These shadows travel faster than the inert minute and hour hand on the actual clock. If we aged faster, say inside of a day, I'm certain this is what it would feel like. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick... I think I can hear my hair growing.

Perusing the shelves of a discount store, I scored a cheap bag of shelled peanuts. My plan? When I got home, I'd sit on the wooden steps with a smoke and a beer and whip these peanuts through the air at the chipmunks and squirrels. 

"That'll make them love me" I told myself. "They will be so thankful".

So there I was all rested against the steps, propped up on my elbow slowly quenching my thirst with a PBR. From afar, the rodents observe the small number of peanuts I've put out for them, but they also see me. An hour is my limit and I surrender. I head inside defeated. Humans can be so terrifying I suppose. They can be selfish. They can be greedy.

I couldn't get any of the chipmunks to act like the cute little critters they're supposed to be by climbing my leg and taking a peanut from my hand. Nature should have programmed them to know how to act in front of my hubris of being a giver. It's frustrating. However, a revelation occurred. Well not really a revelation. More like a reminder. Peanuts when they are roasted and salted are very delicious. I ate a couple of them. That's all it takes sometimes... 

I ended up annihilating the bag. Empty shells now littered the trash can. I guess for brevity's sake, I could have simply said "I bought a bag of peanuts for the squirrels and chipmunks. I ended up eating all of peanuts".

Have you ever thought of some problem, and it could be of any size, pressing hard against the walls of your brain. Solutions are forming and begging desperately to be poured into a blog or essay. Perhaps the covers of a notebook open like flood gates as ink crashes all over the page hastily being filled with random thoughts and solutions. Or perhaps your preferred medium is a word processor and machine gun like clicks from the keyboard spray letters to apparently suppress the white space on the screen. You have to arrive at some destination, a goal, a set of answers that will put to rest that dilemma you started with… but a myriad of thoughts start cycling around the brain like a party of squirrels trapped in a phone booth. The word count grows. Your words loiter over the topic trying to cover every plot-hole in this new theory you’re crafting. But it’s never enough, is it? It needs a little more. You will now amend with more words! Hopefully I’m not rambling on from the original point. Now my original point… Damn it! I am rambling. See now this is why I never finish anything I write!