Inspirations

    I’ve got two poets in the Masters and Mercenaries world—Remy Guidry from Close Cover and Kala, who would threaten to beat up anyone who actually read hers. Comparatively they are totally overwhelmed by the number of romance authors in my universe, but that’s probably understandable since we tend to write what we know. 

    But the poets are important to me because poetry was where I first found my love of writing. 

    I will admit to loving Shel Silverstein as a kid and the magic of Dr. Seuss, since his stories are really poems. As I got older I became deeply obsessed with John Keats and the Romantics. In college I studied the works of Octavio Paz and the modern masters. 

    I wrote a lot of poetry in my youth. I recently started a project. I found a stash of old work in the deep recesses of my closet, all handwritten poems and notes. I’m typing them into my laptop with notes on as much as I can remember about them. It’s interesting revisiting my late high school through college and early marriage days. I’ve learned I was pretentious AF, and also really good at putting my soul on a page. It’s different from my novel work, and yet the habit of being open and honest is there. 

    Remy’s work is basically spoken word. Kala’s is much more like what I wrote when I was younger. Which is why you don’t see a lot of it. It’s personal. It’s a map to a soul. 

    So when I went to find a poem I could share as an example, I hesitated because so much of my work in that time was processing the traumas of childhood. I’m saving those. Maybe I’ll publish them one day, maybe they’ll be these snapshots for my children to read long after I’m gone. But one of the things I liked to do during my poet era was respond to the works I read. I wrote an epic poem called Ophelia: Drowning and Omnipotent long before Taylor…maybe before she was born. Sigh. I wrote a lot about Eve and Pandora and the feminine characters. But the one I’m going to share is probably the one that’s defined me. When I was in high school my G&T teacher’s favorite poem was The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. I loved it, too. At the time I only saw the beauty of being different. 

    But then I lived. There is beauty in being different, but there’s also struggle, and honestly, this was the first piece of work that taught me everything is about point of view. 

    So here it is. A piece of my mind from the 90’s. Don’t forget—I was really pretentious. 

Mr. Frost and Logic

I read you in my youth

            And thought

Old Man –

            Peaceful, Pensive and Calm

            I love you

I love your roads and pathways

Yellow wood and nature green

I took you to my soul

I did not know

Now I have read you in rooms dim 

Lit with the years and experience

My eyes strain

Green to deeper

Old Man – 

            Bitter and cynic mind

I know you

Two roads diverged

Equal darkness

There’s a reason one’s less travelled.