Why am I doing this?

Why am I doing this? 1982 is long gone, and frankly, this poetry sucks. I know, I know. Bear with me. It gets better. It's a journey to be followed - an arc of a teenage life. And this is the internet. I am allowed this indulgence. (Although I'm also allowed to be completely ignored - but that works for me, too, in a different sort of way.)

A long time ago, I compiled a book of poems, but I never had the courage to send it out into the world. I will post most of it here. But in the process of searching through my archives (some of it, I'm sure, for the first time since high school), I'm finding some things more interesting than others. The context of my life in the '80's can be tremendously entertaining. And I'm finding some of the little ways that I took my self so seriously, frankly, hilarious.

The point is, no one had a blog back then. Maybe a zine - which you spent 2 weeks slaving over at the xerox machine in the library, making collage art out of obscure tidbits from whatever book you just pulled off the shelf, and peppering it with references to as many other obscure artists as you could find. You made 20 copies, and they were gone in a day. Hopefully read and passed on, but who knows? We were so eager to be heard! Generation X built this internet from that sheer desire, but we didn't get to come of age in it. So that's what I'm recreating for you.

This is for everyone who threw it all out, or had it lost in the fire. For everyone who had to make a clean break, or couldn't live with the embarrassment of the past. Am I embarrassed? Sure, I'm embarrassed. Even more, I'm afraid that none of it means a damn thing. So I do it for myself, as well. For 17-year old Sharon, from central Illinois, who hoped the poetry would one day set her free.