Are you afraid to write dangerously, fellow poets?
Is love all there is to talk about?
It seems that perhaps you have yet to find your voice,
and that's fine.
But, when I read your poems, I become worried.
Your heartbreaks are important, yes -
it's part of your experience -
but there is more happening in this world,
and I'm sure you have something to say about it.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Having been brought up as Catholic,
I was always told that
God was a jealous god.
Jealous.
That there is no room
for other so-called "gods" in his churches,
and that there can be no room for another
in the hearts of his disciples, his children.
Children.
     Now, a man of twenty-six years,
I ask, I wonder,
why do we invest our faith in a God
who is jealous, when we ourselves
do all we can to abolish
the jealousy in our own hearts?
Is God so unsure of himself that,
were we to merely consider another,
he would reject us and hold us in contempt?
And yet, he is described as "perfect."
Perfect.
That he need not work to improve himself,
though we here on Earth
do all that we can to come close
to purity and perfection.
     As a man of only twenty-six years,
I can tell you with a certain conviction
that God is only a child -
a child in need of guidance, himself.
And I wonder still, more than ever, it seems,
why we look to God at all
and not to ourselves.

Your experience will always be less
than that of those for whom you write.
Therefore, don't write for anyone but
yourself.
If others wish to know you, let them ask.
If you wish to answer, read them your poems.

Breaking free from the line
I had formed in my mind,
I ran all the way to your door.
"It's been years," you proclaimed
as old passions inflamed.
"My dear, any port in a storm."

Pitch-black the night:
God is awake yet,
sitting on the hospital roof,
feet swaying, dangling from the ledge.

Bitter cold is the wind,
howling like a broken heart,
dancing in the doorway
around the newly-christened widow.

Hard are the hearts
of the bedside mourners;
the brother, the sisters, the parents
whose eyes still trace the floor.

And pitch-black remains the night,
God jubilantly whirling, barefoot on the roof,
little more than a mere child
with another new friend to amuse.

"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."