Ashley Simpson.  because I got arrested for public intoxication just when she came on.  And it was my birthday celebration.

An English teacher, poet, novelist, illustrator, wizard, Emperor-Uber-Alles, and free spirited mad man/prohet.

You see, it wasn't really my 23rd birthday, I was just saying it was.  I wanted a big birthday party so my friend and I made up fliers and passed them out at random.  Not many of the invites even came, but the few that did brought lots of people with them.  My birthday is on the longest day of the year, so its genereally hot with good weather, so I planned on a barbecue.  So everyone whose going to come is there and the sky is grey.  Before the grill is even started, the rain comes and it is a torrential down pour  with no end in sight.  My friend, however, is determined and immediately sets about on a huge project.  He makes a make-shift roof in front of the apartment door using wooden sticks that went to something or other and a mat of cardboard I covered in duct tape for an abandoned project many months ago.  The kept up and the roofing was a complete success, thus saving that part of the birthday.

 Who do I begin with?  A mystery unfolds in my atempts at poetry.  
Dear Ashleigh, I fear I will never see you again.  Even if I did, would you be happy to see me?  You can not know how much I miss you, nor the regret I feel for the way we parted.  You were the best to me.  At best, I can say that I am falling to far apart from everyone.  Everywhere.  I've always been sad.  People laugh AT me, not With me.  The Jackal, you once said.  The Jackal, I am to understand is a Trickster, and accustomed to laughing at others.  Teaching them too, apparently.  I've begun work on that story, putting it down and all.  I dedicate it to you.

--Forever in love, the incredible Mr. Nobody.
 

I don't know about this HTML business, I never know what's going on. read the Bartimaeus Trilogy. I learned about it from my Teaching Young Adult Lit instructor and it is fabulous.  I mean, it works out well enough so far: listening to people I mean.  Its getting one's self to read that can be the challenge....