I have recently begun using my middle name, Michael, along with my given name and surname. I do this to indicate my gender and so that sports page readers will not think they are encountering Kerry Wood, number 34 on the Chicago Cubs pitching staff. That super-stud was named after me - about 45 years after me.

No, I am a graduate of Yale with a Master's degree in Engliish. I am busily retired and live in Pacific Grove, CA, with my wife Sally and dog Chloe. Since retirement, my time has been devoted to writing and attempting to market my self-published memoir, "Past Imperfect, Present Progressive." I applied for a job at Monterey Harbor but was deemed underqualified. They needed people to sit on rafts to discourage seals and sea lions from climbing aboard. I arrived with deck chair, sun screen, six pack and a stack of novels but got turned down. I'm considering a lawsuit.

I spend much of my spare time at the computer and playing golf - activities in which I displays dazzling ineptitude. I often long for the non-electric Smith-Corona portable typewriter on which I produced copy for most of the eight textbooks I co-authored.

Retired after 37 years as a teacher of English, foreign languages, journalism, SAT prep, Health Ed, Drivers Ed, weightlifting, basketball and volleyball in locations as different as the East Palo Alto ghetto, upscale Woodside, CA, and Istanbul, Turkey, I started my formal education doing hard time at a Catholic military boarding school at the age of 4 in 1942.

With the end of WWII, I returned to ordinary parochial elementary and high school and then matriculated at Yale University. I majored in English because they didn't offer any classes in lion taming, wing walking, or counterfeiting.

At Helium I am a sub-steward of Arts & Humanities, American Literature, Poets and Poetry. I was recently asked to be the Helium "go-to guy" on matters Shakespearean-a task I would readily hand off to others more widely read. Don't ask me about King John or any Henry plays above the number V. If I ever read Cymbeline, Pericles, "The Phoenix and the Turtle," "Venus and Adonis," Titus Andronicus, or Timon of Athens, I remembers zilch about them.

I can be reached at kerrywood007@comcast.net Info at www.kerrymichaelwood.com

My passion is ...

the English language

I know too much about ...

grammar

My parents always told me ...

Don't blame yourself on us.

My childhood ambition ...

to succeed in athletics and cut a swathe through the opposite sex

My favorite memory ...

holding in my hands a book with my name on the spine

Why I write ...

It's one activity in which my ineptitude is less glaring and salient

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

help menus/a blinking cursor on a computer screen/borborygmi

My first job ...

pitching watermelons

My best moment ...

there are too many

My inspiration ...

still waiting for it

Creative Writing > Poetry Poetry: Writing

40 of 492

SONNET ONE

When the gray hour looms, I hide and write.
I trip all over unpoetic feet.
With metaphors arcane and recondite,
I bare my soul with candor indiscreet.
For poetry can quell the pensive mood.
My mind's gross clutter yields forgotten toys.
Like mice, my furtive fancies oft intrude,
And measured syllables project their noise.
Then into spiral notebooks go these lines,
To lie forgotten on some dusty shelf,
But when in later years the sick soul whines
And burrows through dark muck to seek itself,
Yes, then with joy of rediscovery
I find an offering from me to me.

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