I don't write a lot of poetry, but I've produced some, and even sold a couple of pieces.

I wrote a bunch of bad poetry and stupid song lyrics in high school* -- hey, who didn't? -- and have been known to generate adequate doggerel on occasion, but so far as I can recall I've only produced four poems anyone would care about:

• "When I See Rigel's Light Sleeting Through the Side of Heinlein Station"

  I wrote this basically to prove that I could indeed sell poetry to a paying professional market. It first appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Mid-December, 1989, and was reprinted in Lower than the Angels, edited by Vonnie Winslow Crist and David W. Kriebel, Lite Circle Books, July 1999

• "The Second Draft"

  You can read this one online. I originally dashed it off on GEnie one day in 1992, and thought I was done with it, but then people kept asking about it, so I printed it out, and eventually put it on my webpage in the Advice section. I've given permission to reprint it a couple of times, for writing classes and the like.

• "I Bought A Bar in Nashville"

  In 2017 I visited Nashville for the first time, and noticed that regardless of venue, almost every band played a certain artist's songs, even though he's not someone you hear that much anymore anywhere else -- Merle Haggard. I am not a fan of Merle Haggard. Anyway, I filed this curious fact away in the back of my mind, and in 2019, on a whim, I wrote a poem inspired by this observation. I posted it on my Patreon page. I don't remember the circumstances, but then I sold it to a benefit anthology called Quick Draw! Fast and Funny Fiction, edited by Noah K. Sturdevant and published in 2020 by Platinum Spork Press.

• "Tough Neighborhood"

  You probably never heard of this limerick (!), but in fact I sold it three times. (Sort of. I only got paid twice.) It never saw print; all three publishers went under before they could use it. It got as far as page proofs in May of 1999, and that's the last I heard. It was originally accepted to an anthology of fantasy about police officers, to be called A Different Beat, which I thought sounded pretty cool. "Tough Neighborhood" was about the hazards of being a beat cop on the edge of Faerie. Alas, I can't find a copy anywhere.

* I had enough of this schlock that I put together a collection of poems, which I pretentiously titled Lyryk for the Dark Musyk. Yes, spelled like that. I was sixteen. Fortunately, I only ever produced one copy, and I don't know where it is.

A friend found one of the song lyrics once, and liked it enough to write music for it. Didn't help much.

There were one or two images and phrases in this morass of juvenilia that didn't totally suck, but it isn't worth trying to salvage them.

That's it; here's your list of handy exits:

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