adores his wife and kids. I am a genuinely nice guy and a lecherous pervert who writes some of the most twisted psychosexual horror ever put into print and won’t shy away from a street fight or bar room brawl. These attributes and personality traits would seem to conflict with one another. Yet, they coexist within me in complete harmony. They give me balance. This collection, horror poetry written in Japanese and Korean formal structures, is likewise a combination that may seem incongruous at first but yet is completely harmonious. It makes sense if you know me.
I have always loved horror. I used to lie at the foot of my mother’s bed on Saturday afternoons watching Creature Double Feature o n an old black and white television, infatuated by the monsters and ghouls raging across the small flickering screen. By age twelve, I was reading every Stephen King book I could get my hands on. I knew, even then, that I wanted to be a horror author. By age fourteen, I was writing almost as much as I was reading, churning out story after story of madness and death.
At age fifteen, I had my first heartbreak and instantly, typically, became a poet. Like all young tortured poets I wrote angst-ridden tales of heartache and woe. I still wrote horror stories but there was nothing like a melodramatic poem to soothe my romantic soul. After submitting and rejecting my first horror story at age seventeen, I did not submit another story for nearly thirteen years, and oh how I wish I had those years to do over again. But though I didn’t write much horror during that time period, I wrote a shit ton of poetry.
I competed in spoken word poetry contests and poetry slams. I read poetry on MTV’s The Real World . I performed live with Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets . I had a group consisting of a flutist, a conga player, and a painter. I read poetry to their music while my good friend, an immensely talented visual artist named Norm Maxwell, painted his interpretation of my words on a huge canvas in the background. I performed spoken word performance art in the nude while being oiled from head to toe. I read poetry while whipping a leather-clad woman onstage to the sound of drums. I even read poetry as part of a hip-hop group. I did everything I could think to do with poetry. Then I started writing horror again and I put poetry on a back burner… until now.
This collection combines my love of poetry with my love of horror. Some of these poems are quiet and some quite extreme. A few of these poems I would consider some of the most haunting and genuinely spooky words I have ever written—horror of the campfire ghost story variety. This collection is also richly flavored by my love of Asian culture and particularly its art and poetry.
My love of Japanese poetry began my first year in college when I was a creative writing major with an emphasis on poetry. Before eventually switching my major to philosophy, I took a class titled Writing and Interpreting Japanese Poetry. Although I was already familiar with haiku this course introduced me to new forms like choka and tanka . I fell in love with these poetic forms almost instantly. I found their rigid disciplined structure perfectly complimented the rigid discipline of my life as a martial artist. It was no longer a mystery to me why samurai wrote poetry.
For those unfamiliar with Japanese poetry, these poems may require some explanation. Many of the poems contained within are haiku , three line poems consisting of five syllables, seven syllables, and a final line of five syllables. What I have done with most of them is to arrange them in such a way that when read one after another they form one cohesive poem yet they can still stand alone as individual pieces. Not an easy task. As a result, this collection contains as few as eighteen poems and as many as sixty or more depending on how it is read.
In The Wind Over the Water, I took some liberties with the form, creating my own hybrid
I have always loved horror. I used to lie at the foot of my mother’s bed on Saturday afternoons watching Creature Double Feature o n an old black and white television, infatuated by the monsters and ghouls raging across the small flickering screen. By age twelve, I was reading every Stephen King book I could get my hands on. I knew, even then, that I wanted to be a horror author. By age fourteen, I was writing almost as much as I was reading, churning out story after story of madness and death.
At age fifteen, I had my first heartbreak and instantly, typically, became a poet. Like all young tortured poets I wrote angst-ridden tales of heartache and woe. I still wrote horror stories but there was nothing like a melodramatic poem to soothe my romantic soul. After submitting and rejecting my first horror story at age seventeen, I did not submit another story for nearly thirteen years, and oh how I wish I had those years to do over again. But though I didn’t write much horror during that time period, I wrote a shit ton of poetry.
I competed in spoken word poetry contests and poetry slams. I read poetry on MTV’s The Real World . I performed live with Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets . I had a group consisting of a flutist, a conga player, and a painter. I read poetry to their music while my good friend, an immensely talented visual artist named Norm Maxwell, painted his interpretation of my words on a huge canvas in the background. I performed spoken word performance art in the nude while being oiled from head to toe. I read poetry while whipping a leather-clad woman onstage to the sound of drums. I even read poetry as part of a hip-hop group. I did everything I could think to do with poetry. Then I started writing horror again and I put poetry on a back burner… until now.
This collection combines my love of poetry with my love of horror. Some of these poems are quiet and some quite extreme. A few of these poems I would consider some of the most haunting and genuinely spooky words I have ever written—horror of the campfire ghost story variety. This collection is also richly flavored by my love of Asian culture and particularly its art and poetry.
My love of Japanese poetry began my first year in college when I was a creative writing major with an emphasis on poetry. Before eventually switching my major to philosophy, I took a class titled Writing and Interpreting Japanese Poetry. Although I was already familiar with haiku this course introduced me to new forms like choka and tanka . I fell in love with these poetic forms almost instantly. I found their rigid disciplined structure perfectly complimented the rigid discipline of my life as a martial artist. It was no longer a mystery to me why samurai wrote poetry.
For those unfamiliar with Japanese poetry, these poems may require some explanation. Many of the poems contained within are haiku , three line poems consisting of five syllables, seven syllables, and a final line of five syllables. What I have done with most of them is to arrange them in such a way that when read one after another they form one cohesive poem yet they can still stand alone as individual pieces. Not an easy task. As a result, this collection contains as few as eighteen poems and as many as sixty or more depending on how it is read.
In The Wind Over the Water, I took some liberties with the form, creating my own hybrid
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