This is a collection of free verse poetry. Some are quite sad and serious, I've even been told by some people that they actually had tears streaming down their cheeks. Others are amusing or of a positive note. Some are true stories about things that have happened in my life. Others are a complete fantasy. I often challenge people to pick out the fantasy from the real, and more often than not they get them backwards. There are also a few thoughts for the day as I call them that are only a few lines long. They are intended to make you stop and think about your life. Maybe you will like them. I hope you like the majority of the book. I doubt anyone will like everything in the book, but I hope at least a couple of them will catch you by the heart. Enjoy.
About the Author: I spent my whole life in a small rural town in NC. As the years have passed it has become less rural and being a small town boy I'm not sure I like that. I grew up walking over to the dam on the river that runs by the town. We would climb down the race wall to get to the river below the dam. Can't do that now because there is a chain link fence going down beside the river so you can't get to it. I have a lot of good memories about walking to the river in the summer, but no more teens will have those memories. Just doesn't seen right. I'm an oddity in my own way. I dropped out of school at fifteen because it was boring. It didn't help that near the end of my freshman year I tried to exit a '56 Ford through the windshield. It didn't work, but it did leave me with a couple hundred stitches from the chin up so I looked like Frankenstein's monster. In later years I got my GED and started taking classes at the nearest community college. Working full time I had to take four shots at it, but I got a AAS in Information Systems. At one point I was taking classes at Rowan Cabarrus Community College and UNC-Charlotte at the same time. I broke three bones in my ankle and was out of work for over a year, so UNC-Charlotte went out the window. I still have two screws in my left ankle. In 1999 I twisted my back and ruptured a disc. After two operations I was left with a disc fusion and declared disabled. Now I had metal in my back and ankle. In 2013 I had another operation in my back to remove bone that had grown into the spinal canal and was pressing on a nerve. In late 2015 I fell, landed on my butt, and destroyed a vertebrae. So, in early 2016 I had my forth operation and my second fusion. I hope that doesn't happen again. Most of my life I worked in factories like weave rooms and knitting rooms. I have worked on looms, circular knitting machines, and warp knitting machines. And in between all that I did eight years as a crane operator in a quarry. Well, that's probably more than you wanted to know about me. I hope you enjoy the book.