I was asked by a New York newspaper reporter if I use the same template, just plugging in different names, when I dedicate a prose poem to someone. I didn't know what to make of that question. Did the reporter think I reuse the same poem over and over again? That I can't or won't create new work each time I post on social media? I still don't know if he thought I was clever, or lazy. But I don't recycle my work, filling in the blanks. When I write a prose poem, and use someone's name in it, it's because that person's life has somehow intersected with mine. I feel a need to include them in my expanding opus. Does that make me a crude exploiter. A ballyhoo artist? Maybe. I don't mind admitting I crave the limelight. But what I most want as a writer, as a poet, are new ideas to ground my works in reality. Because I keep falling into the fantasist mode. Everything I write threatens to topple over into whimsy. Even the articles I ghostwrite for a fee. For commercial websites. I like to make up statistics and quotes from fictitious sources. I'm going to get caught one day, and that will end my second source of income. My main source of income is Social Security, which comes once a month inside the pouch of a federal pelican. The check smells like fish. See what I did there, Mike . . .
