Most artists are never without pencil and paper. We usually keep some kind of image diary in which we sketch what we see as we see it. This exercise teaches perspective, aids memory, trains the hand to serve the eye, and helps us learn to concentrate our visual focus. These sketches usually add up to pads upon pads of paper covered with dashed-off visual imagery, sometimes rubbed out, often overlapping.

Because of my shyness about drawing in public, and because I find it awkward to carry around the larger pads of sketch paper which are more likely to result in a meaningful visual record, I tend more often to carry a tiny notebook and just jot down word sketches of all observed, remembered, expected, or fantasized images, as they present themselves to me, whether from outside or within. This helps me process things I'm thinking about, and it aids my memory when I get back to the studio and want to explore something more fully in a different medium. The stuff I'm showing you here comes from my verbal sketchbook for the last twenty-odd years.

I add to this page irregularly; I also subtract periodically as different pieces lose meaning for me. I even occasionally edit old pieces as the whim takes me. Most of these sketches do not rhyme. I call these sketches "poems" because I define poetry as painting with words. As it happens, though, some of these sketches/poems are not even particularly visual.

All of these poems may not be suitable for all audiences. They arise from various areas of my own life and some others, from both bright and black moods, and while some are simple harmless observations, the continuing body does cover all the big conversational no-nos - sex, politics, religion, death, obsession, ethical treatment of animals, abuse, cancer... I've tried to organize them so you can avoid your own bugaboos, or so you can gravitate right toward whatever bits of all this might in fact interest you. On the other hand, if you're at all worried, you really don't have to read them.

First, the latest:  Haiku Madness

Now on to other stuff:

Garden Musings	Love, Sex and Dysfunctional Relations(hips)
August	cages
Bloom	Imaginary
End of Season	I look forward
Feeding the Birds	I Remember
Memory	Lashed
	Movie Break-Ups
Other People	Ssh
Bob
creation	Dirty Tricks Like Illness and Mortality
Each woman walking by	Brave Procession, The
Exchange	Cancer Prayer
Golfing with God	Experimental Treatment
good friday
Immaculata boards the bus	How Things Looked That Day
In an art school classroom	After Dark
Morning, Summer	birds and bread in the bois de boulogne
So this is love	Birds in the Hand
star	Blue Heron
Vanessa	black hills
woman sits, A	character flaws
woman with black hair, The	dull brassy glass of summer sunlight, the
	Fall storm
Reasons for Leaving Home...or Sticking Around, Maybe...	Night Wine
Absolution	night walker
For Mama, walking the cliffs alone	Scented tiny ruffles
For my distant sister	sunlight shining, sparkling
spider	Talking Walls
	way the wind is blowing, The
Assorted Ironies, Including Politics
five minutes	Quick Takes
In this world	Conception
Luxury	Gardener Haiku
Political Balloons	Salinas Valley Vineyards
Possible Future for the Hunt, A	snow settles, The
Robotics	toy

Psst -- Fontaholics: Like the font in the title? It's called "Kaufmann," and it came bundled with an Adobe product.