.......................................................................................................................................................... Do You Write About What Oppresses You? What are you waiting for? ______________________ weigh so heavily on us and feel as though at any moment they may crush us, but we all have such burdens-- be it the fear of death, of poverty, of being unloved, alone-- these are all very real thoughts and for some, they become obsessive thoughts. I've found one of the ways to deal with them in a healthy, matter-of-fact way is to get them out- and onto paper. Heartache, heartbreak, anger~ these are all fine fodder for poetry; hell, even if no one reads them, when you write them down and begin to play around with language, you tend to get lost in the construction after a while and right there the feeling is looked at and aired and in doing so, somewhat diffused and a lot more managable. Writing out the dark stuff is a way of coping as well as developing your creative side in the bargain. Any time we can take a burden and miraculously transform it into a tool is a plus in my book. To shift from 'stinkin' thinkin' (to borrow from A.A.) and enter a generative mode is one of the miracles of expression, and a testimony to the power of the human mind and heart to recoup from losses. If you've got a serious case of the soul grippe-- write it out. There is a difference however, in replaying old themes just for reaction- perhaps because the theme itself relies heavily on shock value for attention, and that is very different from a molten need in the moment to confront some profound sadness or despair- and the difference lies in motive. Is the writer playing on the reader like a violin, or finding out something altogether new for himself; this is a telling distinction- one is pure discovery, while the other is a descent into the sticky lair of obsession. So the question is, is he or she carving out a passageway into the caverns we sometimes find ourselves fallen into, and need simply to make a yelp?- in times like these, when we write successfully, the reader will feel the same stumbled-upon surprise as the poet. And in showing our pain, our puzzlement and our fears honestly and without artificial orchestration, those are precious roads inside your readership as well. Poet......dear poet.... don't be afraid of the dark. Main Page 
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