My name is Max Grimm. It's a pleasure to meet you. If we've already met, it's great to see you again. 

This first blog is somewhat of an experiment. But then again, so is life.

It occured to me that quite a few people (and some I've known for a very long time) have no idea that I am a poet and writer. It is with this blog, I would like to share the words I love to weave. 

I hate like all bloody screaming hell to write about who I am and what I do in a third person self aggrandizing way. However, when my arm is being sufficently twisted to provide a writers bio, it goes something like this....

Max Grimm is a work in progress. Like his family, his art, yoga, the mountains, the ocean and he who created them, Max loves poetry as much as than the life which he has been graciously granted. Max has been a teacher, an actor, a video producer, a chef, juvenile delinquent, a printer, a scenic artist and lighting technician, drug addict, construction worker, unemployed, self employed, a husband, son, father, friend, artist, shaman, yogi and poet. Max received the gift of writing from his grandfather, a simple and gentle soul, blessed with a practical philosophy, kind heart and the grace to turn an every day phrase into a magical invocation. Aught else could come from Max's upbringing, but the ability to craft life's joys and sorrows (of which, there have been many) into lyrics, poems and tirades all intended to weave us closer together. To realize the mutual heart and soul we all share. Max has a great love of metaphors, run on sentences, impassioned improvisational performances and of the good fortune to share them with you.

What I do is write from the heart and soul. Sometimes the floodgates open. I can't promise in this blog I won't swear, talk about sex or say something this is going piss someone somewhere the hell off. I will however be honest. Be forewarned.  

If I may....

The initial spark for this poem came on morning of the first day of school 2010. I walked my son Daniel to the front doors of the building. After I commented about how big he was growing and kissing him on top of his blonde head, he walked away from me and into his first day of fourth grade. As I turned to walk through the current of humanity, it hit me like a vajra lightning bolt punching me squarely in the heart. I could always intellectually grasp the reality of parents dying, me growing older, my kids growing up and during the whole process we never really become the perfect individuals we envisioned in our youths. At the end of the day, we are who we are, and there is not a damn thing wrong with that. If we each do the best we can with what we have, fess up when we fuck up, give credit where credit is due, then that's about as perfect as us humans can be. Life's purpose will have been fulfilled.

It goes like this...

Someday

he will outgrow

his new pants

backpack

and the caress

of my hand

while crossing the street

She will grow

and find another man

to restructure her heart

diminishing

my place

in her life

but I will remain

the man

who loved her first

Someday

I will grow

to be the person

I should have been

and come to love

the soul I was

when my father died

Throwing his pictures

all around the room

screaming

disintegrating

setting a fire

in the trash bin

that night

hoping to exorcise

my hell

and liberate his soul

Wounded soldiers

both of us

Though he

would spit on

my tour of duty

and rightly so

since he was the one

committing murder

I

only contemplating suicide

My mother, his wife

running rampant with bandages

spilling gauze tape

empty of promising words

our cheerleader vacant

due to her ills

the picture of portraits

stained

somewhere in her youth

I am clueless and damaged

unable to decipher

these histories

and destinies

I know naught else

but to cry

and pray

for these ones

I claim not

to understand

but love

and sometimes wonder

if it is

to my detriment

Do they

or will they

ever remember

the spectre

who prayed for

and loved them?

My wife unaware

of who inhabits

her bedroom

of who kisses her neck

just before we make love

I incinerate

from within sometimes

like the fallen angel

I aspire to be

Someday my children

will outgrow their lives

and we will meet in heaven

What will they tell me

I did or said

to make them more compassionate

in their world

and what helped them

ease the grip

on their children’s hands

and ascend

towards the clouds?

Thank you for reading.

All my love,

Max