Poetry has certainly fallen on hard times in North America. People used to know Robert Frost, Ogden Nash, Leonard Cohen, e.e. cummings, William Carlos Williams, Rod McKuen, or someone else at least casually. Today they know the Coke or Pepsi jingle, or possibly have committed the opening lines of Star Trek to memory. This seems like a very poor turn of events to me. I think that poetry has a special abbreviated power all its own that serves us very well. At this point, however, I certainly wouldn't mind if it was called something else, since it seems to have come into such considerable disfavor with just about everyone. The "Poetry" section in Chapters is one tiny four foot high bookshelf, with hardly anything on it. People often seem to be deterred from reading poems because they feel (or far worse, are made to feel by others) that they don't really understand what they are reading. This is especially unfortunate because poems only come to life in the light of your own interpretation and experience. There are no larger issues of wrong or right in this material, and the interpretation you find on your own is fine with me, so enjoy yourself here. If you didn't get what I intended, then that was strictly my fault. My own experience has been that shorter explanations often seem to be better, which is how I came to write in this particular way. If a word like "poem" offends you, or makes you feel less of a man, somewhat effeminate and emasculated, then think of these as very short essays or stories; or possibly as the sound tracks of commercials, if you're not much of a regular reader. There is a slight chronological order to these, but they are also grouped by related events, if that's any help in their decoding. Actually, now that I think of it, they are really a bit random, time-wise. Since I ran into quite a few problems, some of which wound up here, you may find something of real use to you personally. Some people find comfort in knowing they are not the only one to have troubles. Frankly, it's hard to be cheered by the knowledge that not only you, but countless unknown others, are going to sink in any given boat. Just keep in mind that God has quite a sense of humor,

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The haiku and other oriental poems reproduced here have come from a variety of translators, Ho-yen's comes from D. T. Suzuki's excellent and extraordinary book "Zen Buddhism". Since I have read at least two differing translations for most of these poems, I hope I have remembered the ones with the best sense of the original author, as I felt it. The line from J. R. R. Tolkein is from his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and is also written in his book as: "elen sila lumenn omentilmo" My wife, Suzie, had it inscribed on a ring for me years ago. After 34 years, I still think it's true. The lines from my father's book (Only Lovers Know) are taken from the poem of the same name, and are the closing five lines of the book. The quote from Mel Webster is from one of his science classes in the late sixties, which I am sure none of his students ever forgot. Some people have also had a very great influence on me either personally, or indirectly, and I see traces of them in these pages, my wife's being the deepest. Robert A. Heinlein, Jerry Severeid, D. T. Suzuki, Taj Mahal, Kim and Alice Badrkhan, D. H. Lawrence, Bonnie Raitt, Hermann Hesse, Eric Frank Russell, Holly Sparks, Gwen Voorhees, Mel Webster, Al Singer, Bob Pitters, Jerry Cutler, Jesse Vasquez, Charmaine Kadley, Rod McKuen, Lois Young, Van Morrison, Danny Leonette, Magan Bensow, Sten Nilsson, Dan Wheeler, Bertil Gustaffson, Keith Laumer, Lasse Smedlund, Jack Hartman, Kahlil Gibran, Ronnie Brittian, Scott and Rena Kaplan, Chris Loelke, Bart Braverman, Eric Nadler, Sandy Bull, Scott and Johnny Davis, all three of my parents , my sister Angela, and especially my uncle Ted, who gave me the best and most important advice of my life. Thank you all. No matter what any of you imagine, I never forgot any of you, even though we are certainly far apart now.