WRITING TIP TO POETS — IMPROVE THE READERS’ EXPERIENCE BY PROVIDING THE DECODER RING

My Poem on Life and Death Explained

Along with the meaningful engagement that inspired it

I wrote and submitted to Illumination-Curated:

Deaths’ facts differ still Will drives lives’ paths to deaths’ dates Love burns — searing pain Deepest loss most room for gain Endless pain, Light fills the drain

The Decoder Ring

The first two lines of the poem represent my belief, gleaned from conversations with my Lord Rama and my Spirit Guides, through both intuition and dialog, facilitated by my channeler, Ane, that everyone’s soul contract contains two immutable facts — dates of birth and death, but that our paths to death, how we lead our lives, we do very much determine through the exercise of free will and how we navigate the detours / life-lessons that to varying degrees we script in collaboration with the group of hundreds of other souls with whom we generally incarnate, which scripts require our respective gods’ signoffs.

The last three lines evoke the pain experienced by those who loved those dearly departed, and the stronger the love, and the more shocking the death, the deeper the pain pockets.

My infinitely large pain pockets will never empty, which means as they drain, they contain space for an infinite amount of Light.

Some Writing Tips

If you desire “further distribution,” do not write beautiful, long, yet eminently readable sentences like that first, one-sentence paragraph above. Although I wonder what our curation experts, The Maverick Files and Dew Langrial have to say on that point?

If a publication says or implies that their readers do not read at that level, either grin and bear their edit, as I did yesterday when Mystic Minds chopped up my paragraphs in my Spiritual Awakening Followed By Integration and Alignment, The 3 overlapping stages of my spiritual journey.

I am fine with all of your formatting changes. I don’t like the choppy paragraph style, but I am ok with those changes. It’s your pub;

or tell them to go f**k themselves and submit it elsewhere — or say so politely — up to you and your mood at the time. If an editor of the Illumination group tells you to shorten your sentences and you defend your gorgeous sentence, and the editor does not relent, chalk it up to the editor's newness to the position and email or Slack-DM me and we will publish your piece as you desire it, and the editor, confused by the rules of other pubs, will thereby learn Dr Mehmet Yildiz’s inclusive policies.

Have you noticed that I have yet to use any of these words anywhere in this article: “is,” “are,” “was,” “am,” or any other conjugates of the enemy of a well-written sentence — the verb “to be.” Do you see the power of the active voice — and how it makes long sentences readable? Versus, do you see that the active voice is powerful and is easier and is more pleasurable to read than the mealy-mouthed passive voice is?

The Poem’s Meaningfully Engaging Birth

Yesterday Patrick M. Ohana and I began meaningfully engaging about his predilection for pussy-poetry, which often satisfy many emotional needs, masculine and feminine, particularly the need to laugh, and piss-off a few puritans along the way.

Me: You have a knack for chatte, aka a gift for gab.

Patrick: I live alone, so not much gabbing, only writing and dreaming of chattes, some real, some fictitious.

Me: L’dFR (laughed for real).

Patrick: Happy to oblige. P.S. I think that we have a similar story in terms of losing our better half.

Me: I am sorry to hear that. Have you read my story?

Patrick: Yes! I lost my wife almost seven years ago.

At this point, I begin to wonder whether we do indeed have similar stories. I began to type a reply asking for a link to his story, but instead, I decided to explore Patrick’s profile page. I entered “wife” in the search bar, and chose the link that led me to this meaningful exchange between Patrick and Dr. Jackie Greenwood that began with this poem by Dr. Greenwood (who incidentally I now recognize from her meaningful engagement possibly with one of my entries in Science and Soul’s 30-days-of-sciku-challenge before they tossed me out of their writer roll because my scikus had too much soul and not enough human-constructed-science (i.e., theories not yet proved wrong), about which I, and I believe my friend ScienceDuuude, beg to differ).

Patrick: I saw my wife die and it wasn’t at all like that, so I gather that you describe another type of death, Dr. Greenwood.

Tread Gently Discussing Death and with Empathy

I totally relate to what I believe Patrick felt when he wrote that. It bothers me greatly when writers generalize their story and purport to know what I am thinking and/or feeling, particularly about a topic as personal as death and mourning, and I ripped Agnes Louis a new ass-hole when she did it in What Happens To You When Someone You Love Dies Suddenly, Well, you learn.

I know you mean well, but I think you might want to rethink the definition of suddenly and “I will tell you” sounds like you own the truth on what this feels like — YOU DONT — please learn the difference between sharing your grief and telling someone else how it will feel for them!!

Ms. Louis watched her mother die in the hospital. Reading the story, I think it fair to infer that Ms. Louis expected her mother to pull through, and thus the death would properly be described as unexpected in her mind, as opposed to objectively sudden.

I dragged the police to my 36-year-old lover’s apartment … (I have written much about it if you do not know the story — you will find it or it will find you on my profile page).

I apologized the next day:

I should not have reacted in a manner that would cause you pain. Please accept my apology.

My initial comment quoted the excruciating details of both unexpected and here-one-nanosecond-gone-the-next suddenness. Ms. Louis didn’t engage at all so I have no idea if she even read either statement. Based on the body of Ms. Louis' work, I am surprised, but perhaps I should not be as I see many stories written about thin-skinned writers and lord knows I see all-too-often in real life the aversion to admitting mistakes.

I really wish people could see the value in making mistakes and admit them rather than get so damn defensive. No one learns anything from being right.

I just found that brilliant piece when looking for a story to support my point. Please read it. The story received 1,500 claps yet nary a response let alone a highlight. That is not meaningful engagement.

Shout-outs — that’s claptrap Egos love their attachments but fear engagements Share your views and thoughts with me Feelings — true intimacy

Back from my tangent to Patrick and the Good Doctor

With respect to Patrick and the good doctor, I then see from their dialog that, not surprising from a 27-syllable poem, the context of the poem was not apparent (writing tip to poets — readers read words, not minds, and poetry often equals ambiguity — which is why I enjoy writing poetry more than I enjoy reading it — I do not enjoy needing a decoder ring — a paragraph from the poet explaining their poem adds to the readers’ experience, for whom we allegedly write)(a tip that Daniel A. Teo engaged well with when I featured his poetry here.)

Dr. Greenwood: I am so sorry for your loss Patrick and no, it is not always peaceful. This was in no way meant to discount how painful the process of dying can be. When I wrote it I had in mind the many animals I had eased to their final breath and my mother- who had suffered for years but in the end, left us with a sigh. These and other losses I have experienced are a constant reminder to me of the fragility of life which was the point I was trying, but perhaps failed, to make.

Patrick: I didn’t feel that you failed, but I don’t think that it can be captured in 27 syllables or 100. My wife actually smiled after years of pain and suffering.

Dr. Greenwood: I agree. Try as we may, words can be an inadequate form of expression. I so appreciate you reading, commenting and sharing🙏

So, my poem above arose out of the challenge to myself to see how much of life and death I could capture in a tanka. I think I captured it in the first 3 lines and could have stopped at the haiku. My friend PoetChris — a masterful wordsmith and practitioner of the art of magic of wordchemy (not a typo — my coinage)(but not as adeptly as the spellbinding poet Anthi Psomiadou) — and I discussed the art of haiku thusly in this meaningful engagement.

Chris posted this haiku on longing:

Days cast shadows near, Where promise was promised lost, I weep for then now.

I responded in part with:

It is easy to 5/7/5. It is not easy to do it well. Yours is fabulous. Allow me to share some of mine with you and I look forward to your thoughts whether or not with praise.

Chris replied:

Awesome awesome awesome!!!! And that’s my reaction before reading a single one, lol!!! I love haikus and the genuine challenge of making profundity echo from simplicity. Simplicity actually turned complex, in the mind of the reader, when the injected pondering(s) implanted by those 17 syllables, hopefully, begin to deprogram at least one layer of illusory bullshit we’ve all coke [sic] to accept. And all that in a poetic ‘iceberg tip’ of an idea or sentiment made in a Haiku.

…

You are absolutely right in your comment to me, and thank you by the way, the proper haiku requires a deeply thoughtful care when constructed, because each line must inform the next to ultimately paint a word picture beautiful as one of Bob Ross’s landscapes and yet with only 1/16 of the time and brush Strokes if you will

A tip about metaphorical images — caption them meaningfully

This is the image Chris chose for his haiku on longing:

That is Chris’ picture of his guitar, which he captioned: “My guitar I often sit longingly with…”

For my tanka on death and mourning, I chose:

I had searched “life and death” on depositphotos.com, to which I subscribe. I almost went with this picture:

But it didn’t capture the travails of a life cycle. I then considered this one:

The dried earth resembled a road but seemed too despairing for my intents and purposes.

I captioned my chosen photo: “I chose this image from my search of “life and death” because the close up evokes tire tracks and thus free will to the predetermined date of return to Heaven.”

Captioning a metaphorical image not only helps the reader but should help the writer with an over-stepping editor.

More on meaningful engagement

When Patrick first responded to me that we shared a common denominator as we had each lost our soulmates, my first inclination was to look for differences rather than drill down to the common feeling that does bind us. Grief — and even then, until I caught myself, I would have looked for anything to set us apart as part of me wants my story to be unique, not just as I do not wish my pain for anyone even though it led to my spiritual awareness, but, admittedly, I feel like it makes me and Sitara all that more special.

That is wrong-headed thinking on my part.

Meaningful engagement stems from identifying with as opposed to distinguishing. In many ways, Medium serves as a self-improvement/support group. I must remind myself to listen for the similarities between others’ stories and mine, and not act like the person at a 12-step meeting who looks first for the obvious differences between themselves and the speaker at a meeting, because people come from many different places and walks of life, instead of filing the differences away and looking for the one thing in someone’s story that I can relate to, which is usually a feeling, and then that part is the only part I should share with the writer, the part that I identify with, the part that unites instead of the multiple parts that set me apart. Once I have established a bond, then I can be more critical. Meaningful engagement is an art. There are times to debate and there are times to listen. Often writers need listening to — not lecturing. Particularly if the writer tells his/her story in the first-person narrative. Synergistic relationships between writers and publications — that is what Dr Mehmet Yildiz seeks to Illuminate.

Please see this first new weekly collection of stories that Holly Kellums will compile.

The stories are selected based upon their impact on readers, as expressed through readers’ meaningful engagement. These are stories that had the most fans and facilitated meaningful community engagement, not just clicks and claps. The content of engagement counts the most.

Thank you for reading. I place some links below to more detailed stories on some of the topics touched on above.

In Rama I create,

Marcus

The kicker-title of that last one is: WITH WRITING TIPS AND A LESSON ON MEANINGFUL ENGAGEMENT ON MEDIUM TOSSED INTO MY CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL