Kickstarter

Remember when you believed in giant peaches, in scrawling a whole world out of a purple crayon, in sailing a boat out of your window and to an island of monsters, in a place where the sidewalk petered out into a vast nothingness?

I do. 

"Where the Windwalk Begins" is my homage to all the weird, wonderful, and forever-inspiring writers of my childhood. Whimsical, dark, bizarre, funny -- each poem is aimed at igniting one's creativity, generating a child's chuckle, populating an imagination. 

The thing is, I want to have these poems illustrated. And in a world of digital sketching, I can't even trace a stick figure. The funds of this project will go toward hiring a professional artist to illustrate these poems, and to refining the ebook so it's a polished, finished project and not a garbled mess of doodles and poor formatting. I'll then publish the book on numerous ebook platforms for an affordable price. (I'd rather be read than rich.)

In case you're curious, here are two of the poems I intend to include:

Missy String Fingers

Missy, Missy,

such a sissy,

can’t even lift a ball. 

For each of her fingers

there’s one piece of string,

have you ever heard of such a thing?

I haven’t.  

I haven’t at all. 

She can’t cover up her sneezes, 

she can’t comb her hair. 

Her fingers wave when there are breezes,

everyone stops to stare.

All day long she sits in her chair

and sings: 

Oh Missy, Missy, who will kiss me? 

My fingers made of string.

Who will ever marry me 

if I cannot wear a ring?  

I will! said Balloon Head Eddy.

And Missy, she was happy, happy, quite a lot.  

And at the wedding, airhead Eddy forgot the ring, 

so instead they tied the knot.

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Up the Paddle without a Creek

It seemed like a good idea—

we cut and carved and nailed and tarred

and painted and panted and sawed.

We sewed and stained and tied

and complained and told jokes and guffawed.

And when it was all done and said,

we jumped right into the bed

of our very own, homemade boat.

We grabbed our paddles and started rowing,

we didn’t care where we were going,

the world was ours for the knowing,

except, we realized, our boat wasn’t exactly floating.

Shouldn’t we be bobbing up and down?

Shouldn’t our sails be full of wind?

Shouldn’t seagulls be wheeling overhead?

Should we be moving, my friend?

It took a few minutes, but we figured it out,

and boy was it heartbreak…

We had built the perfect boat,

but we forgot the lake!