“I’ve chosen to pick up favorite pens again instead,”  she wrote me.  “It’s the visciousness and cruelty of our current human condition. My choice now is to remove myself from these insipid, whining children of the night.  I experimented for a year, using my nephew’s face and a pseudonym as a twenty-something poet instead of using my published real name on this cyber-horrific plane.  This experiment brought me exactly what I suspected: the pretentiousness of the mediocre child critics, who’s altars to old writers they’ve never met or lived around are splintered with the weight of old bones .  I have lived to 72 years, have spent my life desiring the approval of the poetry men of my generation, and have learned many things–the most important thing to remember is to not read the reviews of the nasty and insipid—ever.  It will never assist in the progression of your writings, or help your words roll off your tongue any easier.  Toss that damn machine in the trash and continue with what you are doing.  By hand.  By heart.”                 a very wise woman, chosing anonymity

  the expectation was  to open the doors of self-censorship

to carefully craft each line for the eyes of others

forgetting for a moment who you really are

the critics, steeped in their brand of angst and worship

will damn you to their hell of poisoned self-righteousness

if your words slip into eyes or ears as ‘poetry light’

their knives will be unsheathed

 rabid dogs will tear  at fragile throats ’round midnite

don’t speak to me of trailing vines or pretty flowers, they’ll say

(unless the rose’s thorns draw blood)

don’t write to me of what your eye sees in nature’s wonders

(unless talons are ripping through last night’s carrion)

don’t blind me with what you feel

(unless razor is poised above  hopeless vein)

don’t speak to me of what you release, unburied  unhidden

(unless the bile chokes and i can see the color of the shit in today’s bowl)

they will wrongly tell you its only the grime of the city’s streets

that offer any truth

that despair’s darkest lines are all that could ever matter

and can only bring art’s true vision

to the desperate’s blind eye

 do not believe that your up-cycling feelings don’t belong in poetry

its a lie that only darkness can share the stage