Five things that 2002 taught me:
1. I can survive for 4 months on $300. Pretty well in fact.
2. My poetry doesn't suck. I am actually good at what I love to do.
3. By selling it all, choosing homelessness, and going on tour, I've done more at my young age to follow my heart than most people will do in their entire life. I'm braver than I thought I was.
4. I have to make my own destiny. Fate doesn't exist.
5. Life sucks without a car.
Five personally significant events of 2002:
1. Disowning my father. This was his second chance to be my dad in any way and it went worse than the first. Now I know how not to treat my children.
2. Finally telling Daniela to put up or shut up. She's been a cock-tease and a love-vampire for the last three years and I let her use me because I'm a coward. But I've finally stood up. I'm almost certain I've lost her but I'm free.
3. Getting arrested. It was stupid, I was guilty beyond doubt, and I don't want to commit the same crime ever again.
4. The Save the Male Poetry Tour. 39 shows, 26 states, four men, three months, two countries, and one van. Wow, what a ride.
5. Leaving Flagstaff. It's a good place if you can stand small towns and intrusive personalities, but I'm a city boy and need the diversity of 4 million people. I'd rather be a little fish in a big pond than a big fish in a soup.
Five things I want to do in 2003:
1. Make a National Slam Team and do the thing in Chicago.
2. Be satisfied with my poetry. The kind of poetry that isn't just selfless mental masturbation.
3. Have a meaningful relationship with someone who isn't 18, or in high school, or recently divorced, or my boss. A punk rock art chick who'll break me.
4. Make enough money to buy a car, get a computer, and start publishing the chapbooks of poets across the country.
5. Plan my next national poetry tour.
Five things I don't want to do in 2003:
1. Procrastinate.
2. Let fear or fear of loneliness paralyze my better judgment.
3. Settle.
4. Write crap poetry and try to pass it off as art.
5. Blame writer's block.
Five (groups of) people who I'd like to know better in 2003:
1. My three step sisters, Jessica 19, Danielle 17, and Kristina 11. Jessica got engaged over the weekend, Danielle has a secret artistic side I think I could coax out of her shell, and Kristina is more like me now than anyone else I know.
2. Corbet Dean. He's been the most supportive of all the poets I know, but I don't really know him like I should. He could also help me improve my performance.
3. Klute. He and I could have one of the great friendships that art scholars will debate for decades.
4. Trish JusTrish. I like her and her art more and more I hear it.
5. Scott Creney and Mathew Moon, the two Guerrilla poets from Boston moving to Prescott this month.
