Some men used to fight in wars. My body craves a sense of home front.

The following is an excerpt from my statement of purpose submitted to the Syracuse University MFA program back in 2021.

"I want this degree to help advance me towards my newfound ambition of becoming a college professor. I want to be a beacon of ambition, empathy, and artful response within the realm of poetry. I desire to provide feedback in workshops that pushes students to realize and develop their own intimacy within the art. Finally, I feel like my whole life I've been a wanderer, searching through my life experiences, asking, "Do I belong here?" The only answer or thing I know to be true is that while poetry has not always been prominent in my life, it feels like home, one where each room is no longer filled with a hoarder's stash of papier mâché moments but rather a home decorated with sourced thoughts and hand-crafted memories."

Unfortunately, I've finished the Syracuse MFA, and I can say for certain that there is no literary home to speak of here. That I still feel rhetorically thin and undisciplined. More cave dwellers with a round-backed that just learned flint and sparks are fun, and he can control them.

It's these small flickers of interest where I know for sure the MFA did not magically heal me, or create my inner child a sanctuary to hide in. However, I did create a full-length poetry collection with some sick reveals of personal horror. All in the name of leaving the MFA with intellectual and artistic content that would go nicely with life's 9-5 fuckery. So, of course, in the months after graduation, when I feel without artistic purpose or timeline, fresh out of the cloister of academia and working a full-time job, I decide to start writing my memoir.

Follow this blog to watch me blunder, flop, and mostly fail as I try to create a body of work that allows me to feel something outside the normal, poetic suffering of my service and reintegration back to the civilian realm.