Although our e-mail poetry started out practical -- it inquired whether the other could draw that night and organized the excursion -- eventually, the poetry became an end in itself. This page contains two poems in which Steve and I simply expressed ourselves about drawing.

One Thursday, I received the following poetic paragraph in an e-mail from Steve:

From the worn leather seat of his Harley, the tips of his toes only inches away from the hot Arizona asphalt travelling by at an almost illegal 67 miles per hour. He reached down with a weathered finger and touched the ground with a brand new, Walgreens, oil pastel, only seconds ago safe in its crinkly brown bag, splaying a brilliant green stripe, like the skid mark of a renegade Aztec chameleon on its way to the nearest tequila stand.

The image in Steve's paragraph inspired me to reply with this poem:

From open windows of speeding cars,
Through the rushing roar of desert air,
Passersby squinted and puzzled at
A strange man in the sun's glare.

The man wore black leather,
dirty jeans and tattoos,
He spun his Harley wildly
As if he'd nothing to lose.

The man leaned left and right
As he skidded round and round,
To reach down with pastels
And scrape the ground.

Passersby thought his mind had gone,
Perhaps affected by the heat.
Why else would he take such chances
To smear pastels on concrete.

As his Harley belched smoke,
Others watched with bewilderment.
As the man's pastel crayons
Prodded the hot pavement.

With the load roar of his engine
And the spinning of wheels
The man barely heard
The distant thunder-peals.

But the man stopped abruptly,
And cocked an ear to the sky.
He looked at the horizon.
A tear formed in his eye.

In the distance a jet plane
Lifted slowly into the blue
The roar became louder
As closer to him it drew.

The sun glittered off the plane
As it angled to turn
Above the man on the Harley,
His upturned face stern.

In the plane overhead
A young woman looked down,
And saw her naked self
Scrawled there on the ground.