This, my first book of verse, was published in 1987. I have revised it, added an introduction to each poem, and brought the writing up to current standards. It contains 44 rhymed poems, 8 of which are sonnets. Love and longing are the main themes that permeate this youthful work. If Rene Descartes had been a poet, he might have said, 'I feel, therefore I am.' If life is not felt, then, for the poet, it does not exist. Feelings are our windows to the world; through them we love, hate, desire, fight, flee, find happiness, joy, romance, satisfaction, sadness, and most importantly, develop...

Here is my soul, undress her page by page Behold her private acts upon the stage Pray, hold her gently as you browse and look This is my soul you handle, not a book. Poetry is a precious, ancient wine, made to be savored and remembered, not gulped and forgotten. It is the grand opera of life, which must be performed to be appreciated. My hope is that you will take time to read it, learn it, and passionately recite it to your loved ones. Without art, life would not be enough because it would lack in truth and beauty. Like all the arts, poetry is music of the soul, whose deep penetrating tunes...

These 46 poems (12 unrhymed, 20 short, and 14 long) were written between 1990 and 1993, when I was in my mid forties. Each poem is introduced by a few sentences to set the mood, focus the attention, and entice the reader to read between the lines. The themes that permeate this collection are love, passion, grief, yearning, reflections, beauty, and nature. The metaphors are vivid, paint images for the eyes of imagination, invite interpretation, and provoke contemplation. Whereas a child, hitting on the piano keys, can bring agony out of ordinary notes, an accomplished pianist can bring delight...

This, my fourth book of poems, has 78 poems, which range from short to long, rhymed to un-rhymed, sonnets, haikus, meditations, and literary thoughts. The poems, penned between 1995 and 2001, are listed in chronological order. They are also listed as 37 long poems, 21 sonnets, and 20 short poems. The book was first published in 2002. I have revised and reformatted it for easier reading and brought it up to current poetical standards. Its emotional range covers love, grief, beauty, nature, joy, relationships, disappointments, humanity, philosophy, sexuality, child abuse, and death. Each poem...

Back From Iraq is the story of a soldier, Scott Thornton, who after spending two years in war-torn Baghdad, returns to Oklahoma City a shaken man, only to learn that he has to go back to Iraq again. Changed by his traumatic experiences, he becomes repulsive even to his own family. "What have they done to my son?" says his father, Howard. "Scott never came back from Iraq. He never came back," says Nancy, his wife. The entire novel, which transpires over a period of four months in 2006, reaches into the deep, dark past of the 20th Century when Baghdad was a beautiful city, and then it races...

The Unsung Heroes Of Humanity Ordinary people have always been and always will be the greatest majority of earth's population and the prime movers of all life upon it. Their stories, those unsung poems of humanity, have more to teach us than those of the few exceptional persons, consecrated to fame with historical accounts and autobiographies. For every storied maverick, there are millions of un-storied plebs whose silent seeds blossom in the lush gardens of humanity. To those unacknowledged, misunderstood, used, and abused human masses belongs our exceptional hero, the town's red-eyed drunk,...

This love story begins in 1994, before the Oklahoma City bombing, and ends several years after it. It explores the feelings of a widower physician-poet raising three boys and a divorcee mother raising two daughters. Trauma, medicine, poetry, romance, fear, faith, sensuality, tragedy, comedy, and circumstance maneuver the characters through life's labyrinth until the denouement. All creatures are fashioned after their one great teacher, Mother Nature. She is primal, beautiful, ruthless, cruel, unforgiving-with one permeating spiritual force-life. For the sake of life, everything is...