Patina Soul

"It seems that I wasn't given a new soul when souls were being assigned," so begins this reflective poetry collection as lived and told by Darrin James. Patina Soul has been called, "the most depressing poetry manuscript...in a long time that successfully shies from straight self-deprecation and self-indulgent whining without being scared of being vulnerable in places."Darrin is an old soul who harbors an admittedly good memory, which, for good and for bad, makes things hard to forget. Those memories that put the patina on his soul fill these pages. Patina, he maintains, is the color of age, the hue resulting from time wearing down what was once new, pristine, and shiny. As such, the following collection represents the subtle events in life that stains a soul, weathers a soul, for one reason or another that has caused a patina to cover a soul. Patina is not moldy rot. It is not cancerous rust. It is not a cataclysmic event that violently batters and grotesquely distorts. It is the gentle wearing down, the staining, the slow erosion - call it life, call it "coming of age," call it jaded - I choose to describe them as the patina on my soul. There's a certain beauty in patina. As it hides nothing, it shows what it truly is, even if some consider what they see as faults, flaws. There's a freedom in patina. The new has worn off. Where something new and pristine may be kept unused in a safe place, so to maintain its newness, the intent of something new is to be used and not kept new forever. There's a story in patina and that's what has led us here.