2024-01-19 Accountability means not writing for myself or expressing just for catharsis but writing so that I can be understood by someone else. Otherwise, I can actually literally say whatever I want; in situations where I have responsibility and my words mean something, I might be doing harm or not the good that I could do.
2024-02-02 my favorite high school teacher once critiqued my poetry by telling me that I should try and sit on a single image, a single metaphor, that the way I was tangling words together did not cohere in a manner that was as powerful as the words could be.
This was a poem that I remember writing so that it could not be comprehended or critiqued; it was a mourning song. A lot of times I feel misunderstood and un-understandable. Maybe if I tried, or tried harder, I could accomplish that, I could communicate.
2024-02-14 In retrospect, the thought occurs to me that maybe this was an indication of my struggle with faith all along. If I didn’t believe that I was actually writing down my prayers to a real God, then maybe I was just writing into the void…