A peek at the REAL Thumbster

"Hickeys From A Vampire"

This was the title of the "second" poem I had ever written...Okay, technically it was the third poem I wrote but I don't count or even remember the first poem I attempted.

I'm not sure if it even had a title and I think the title is usually the MOST important part of a poem...especially when it has to compete with several hundred other poems to be read. A book can be hundreds of pages long and allowances are made for not judging a book by it's cover but a poem is usually only one page long and every word counts, especially if they have to rhyme. A song can get by without a good title but it does need a great opening. A poem's ending can sometimes be as important as it's title, sometimes more so, but it doesn't matter if no one reads the poem to begin with...Thumbsucker's rules of poetry...like I'm an expert or something.

I have written a LOT of preachy poems and I'm not sure why...Maybe it's because of all the pain I've read about in other's poetry. Poetry seems to attract those souls who have had more than their fair share of life's hard knocks. By it's very nature, poetry is emotional. People are willing...or compelled...to pour out to complete strangers their fears and hopes, their joy and losses.

I don't consider myself a preachy person in "real life". I don't rush up to complete strangers and warn them about the dangers of smoking or the perils of not using their seatbelts...but I've written more than my fair share of poems that warn against this or that.

In my "real life", nature plays an ENORMOUS part but you wouldn't know it by what I've written so far...go figure.

Maybe that's why I like writing stupid stories...stuff written just for the fun of it...no morals...no lessons to be learned...sorta like watching a Monty Python sketch instead of listening to a sermon.

But every now and then I still have the urge to get on my soapbox and preach...