Have you ever been in the situation that you heard a song on the radio, while driving or while you were having breakfast perhaps, and the main tune and words stay with you all day, despite attempts to get it out of your head? If so, the words and music together have been repeated enough, that you can't get away from them.

This result is the desired effect of many people who are in the music business, and as many recording artists have said, it all starts with the song. The song in your head, the collective work between the musician and a lyricist, has a life of its own.

I was fortune to have one of my poems set to music and it has yet to be recorded by a studio. A former college roommate, Michael Albright, who wrote the music to "Next Flight", will not be writing any more songs. He died in a tragic car accident the summer after my freshman year. My search for a songwriter continues. The odds of a song reaching the recording studio and placed a album are high, but thousands of songwriters make a living a just this kind of job.

This new collection, Latent Songs: Words Without Music, is for those such promising songwriters, because I have 22 poems that have potential of being real songs. Sometimes I hear a melody in my head after writing a poem. Poems such as "God is my Father" in the Grace and Glory book, is one of the poems that got a melody started in my mind, but has not been developed.

However, my musical background stopped in high school after my band director said I wasn't very good at playing the clarinet. I gave up a five-year career in music my junior year of high school to work with the school newspaper my senior year. I later became a news photographer, and learned of a term, the latent image, which is a undeveloped photograph: taken, but not yet seen.

These 22 poems are like a latent image in relation to a song. My challenge is for song writers over the world to make productive use of these words, and any other words in this web site for that matter, and turn them into a song. It doesn't mater what style either- rock, pop, country or rap or the blues. Royalties of performance rights and such can be worked out later, for those who are into details. Who knows what will happen! Elton John and Bernie Taupin found each other in response to an ad in the newspaper, and look what has happened to them!

The challenge remains.