The first poem I ever wrote, back when I was a smartass thirteen-year-old, received an “F”. My father intervened, and my grade was changed to “complete”.

Here is that poem:

free verse

that means I don’t have to write it
or title it

I won’t

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I have continued to experiment with capitalization, punctuation, white space, symbols, the sound and the sense, constraints, traditional forms on occasion, and different justifications. Note that here I mean right, left, center – I don’t think any one of us needs to justify writing poems.