This is a collection of my poetry that was written between 2017 and 2019; but, more accurately, all of 2018. During this period, I was making the most money I’d ever had as a cook, and as a result, I was able to fortify my long-held belief that money alone doesn’t equal happiness. Not for me, at least.

A lot of these poems I wrote in journals that I always had lying around in my apartment. Some of them were also typed out on my typewriter while I sat on my porch with a drink and a smoke and some music. There always had to be music. I’d never had a porch before. I took advantage of it every chance I got. It was great while it lasted.

So yes, the themes in this collection of poetry do include the classics: love and sex and etc. But, as I looked through all the journals and all the sheets of writing that I had found stuffed in different places while I was trying to gather all the material for this book, as I read them, I noticed that most of the works were about me still feeling just as confused and frustrated and bored with life and hungry for more and distant toward many and restless, hopeless, maniacally pleased at all my efforts to stay positive, reckless, yet somewhere deep inside: hopeful–even with all that stinking, rotten money that I was making.

The painting on the cover is a watercolor I painted in one sitting; I believe it was a Sunday. The title of the book is what I had titled the painting and what I kept trying to depict in the painting, even repeated to myself, like a mantra, as I painted it. The photo in the back is of a patch of bugambilia petals that I one day spotted in my backyard as I was taking out the trash. When I saw the sunlight hit that patch of petals just so, everything inside me told me to run and get my phone so that I could take a picture it. After I did, I remember staring at the patch for as long as the sunlight continued to make it look that way. When the magic left, so did I.

YOU CAN BUY IT HERE!