A published writer advised;
“Don’t write about yourself,
you sound like a teenager crying over spilt milk.
Write observations, things outside of you,
or poetry becomes selfish and inward,
and nobody wants to hear a person’s thoughts anymore.
The formula, it’s all in the formula.
You get it right, you have it, you sell it.”
She’s even in bookstores that don’t have poetry sections
she’s doing-poetry-on-tour,
inspiring fledgling poets, who
write about things outside themselves,
in neat obedient mixed-shake-formula.
Sometimes at night, when trains go by,
I think about what she said;
If I can see in the dark
I walk outside and look up at the sky,
bigger than me, a thing outside myself;
and next time I write;
“I saw the moon, it made me think of sadness. It made me remember things inside myself and they rolled over like mice in a wheel
straining for speed.”
I think owing to this,
my books won’t have pretty covers
won’t move a generation
the moon will continue to reflect thoughts inside to without and that’s just how it is
when trains wake you at night
pursuing different tracks.
G&S
Candice Daquin is a French-born psychotherapist, writer and dancer living and working in America.
appreciated…