These are poems I wrote while in college. I am struck now by their awkward and forced attempts to be edgy and challenging. 

I can only plead runaway influence inspiration..... I was reading Julio Cortazar, Samuel R. Delaney, and my friend Harold Cobene -- all three being masters of style and syntax. I was no master.

And to make it worse, I was an English major.

But these poems, as pretentious as they now seem to me, were heartfelt. I worked on them faithfully, offered them to creative writing classes, and had people like Harold and Olivia Castellano of the CSUS English department encourage me. Jack won a minor poetry contest judged in part by Dennis Schmitz.

I will soon post another prose poem, which runs about two typed pages....it evoked the best response any creative writing student could expect from a dried-up novelist teacher:

"I don't enjoy reading Rorschach tests!"

Jack

Past tense "Pain..."

Persona

PGC

We Fall