“I am here to celebrate. I just graduated from college. I celebrated with my family but never took the time for myself to just enjoy the moment so I am smoking a cheap cigar and enjoying the moment. I graduated from South Alabama in accounting. I was in college for seven years and worked while going to college. I took my time and letting it happen was the best choice. I worked in a restaurant, a bank and now an accounting firm in my field. I guess the cigar solidifies that I am an adult. Now that I have more free time, I have gone back to writing. A girl I worked with brought it out of me. We ended things but I didn’t want to stop writing. That is also what I have been doing here. Poetry is an easier way to express myself and the rhythm and flow brings my whole day together. There is never an end to it, it is my own personal cliffhanger to come back the next day and continue to the next part. Maybe one day I will put it into a book for myself or my parents or kids. A few months ago I was in a darker place than I am used to being in and writing was my shimmer of light and turned it into something gleaming.”

This is a poem he wrote that afternoon before I interviewed him.

ONE MORE DAY

Today was the day

You decided you should turn and go another way

I had only a little to say

But thinking back, I left something behind

It was to tell you how I came to find

Someone so special to have me all in a bind

And looking back at the last time I saw you,

I felt there was nothing I could do,

To make you change your mind, to see from my view

But now might be too late,

To grab you by the hand, which makes me hate

The old cliché, to leave the work of fait

To do its part

And hope that someday this old heart

Will have you, the same as a car

Yearns for gasoline to start

For you might not know

But you brought me from the lowest of low

But instead, I sit by this setting bay

And think to myself as these blues play

If only I had one more day