July was an interesting month, if a bit too hot. But, I can smell August. It ain’t pretty. July has a favorite holiday of many, a few cool birthdays, and it is fittingly mid-summer. It has long days, the baseball all-star break, Wimbledon Tennis, chiggers, maybe mosquitoes, the end of the feverish NBA forever season, and other cool stuff.

While writing a poem each day was no more difficult in July than any of the previous six months, it has become something I just do each day. Yesterday’s one became three. I’ve written at all hours: very early mornings (middle of the night), mid-everything, noon, dinner time, evening, late at night, and just before midnight. I have a small cache of ideas, although prompts are plentiful, and I am seldom wanting.

I polish and post some daily ditties. Most are first drafts that get no additional attention for months, if ever. Concurrently, I’m trying to cull out poems for a potential book I may self-publish. I hope I have been sufficiently vague. I don’t know how to get from here to there. Killing darlings has been a difficult task. It may take months for me to crop out a worthy collection.

Thus, I plan to reduce semiweekly postings on Our Literary Journey to weekly, and the same for Dispassionate Doubt, which has been mostly one post a week anyway. But who knows?

I filled one notebook with poems from January 1^st through July 11^th and started a new one. Here are the titles of July Poems:

1. July (the month)
2. The Jaded Eye
3. Shamed Pride
4. Drinkable Wine
5. Today’s Poem
6. Petrichor
7. Enthrall*
8. The Sun
9. Hold My Karma and Watch This
10. The Last Page
11. Free to Let Go
12. Grimace*
13. Five Year Plan
14. Impassible Sad
15. Were Gods Somewhere
16. Sensuous Perception
17. Narcissus at the Gym
18. The Creators (moms)
19. The Ring (the hand kind, not the doorbell)
20. Layers of Identity*
21. In the Poet’s Hand
22. Hushed Me Plumb Up
23. Unthinkable
24. Press Pause
25. Something is Dead
26. Green River
27. I Think it was a Saturday
28. The Long Gray Mullet
29. Edible Confession
30. Dog Poop
31. Time is Coming Over

(* were written from prompts. 7, 12, and 26 were posted.)

Look both ways as you traverse nature’s toilet.
Some poopers don’t have owners to clean up after them.
Mind the gaps or press pause.