She said she doesn’t understand me.
Not my words, not my plans, not me.
She doesn’t understand me.
She said that, “I don’t understand you.”
She also said:
“You don’t use enough poetic words.”
“You’re unclear.”
“No one understands what you mean.”
“You say too much.”
“You leave nothing for the imagination.”
“There’re prettier ways to write that.”
“Your sentences are too long, too short,
Too convoluted, too simple, too complex,
Too awkward, too abstract, too concrete…”
And so much more she said.
She gassed on about my description, my
Commas, periods, semi colons, dashes,
Especially the Oxford commas and italics.
She hates enjambment.
She said it, “I hate enjambment.
I prefer clean breaks.
People need to write plainly.
Go direct,
Say what they mean.”
She likes rhymes or landscapes,
Not a lot of nihilism and death.
She prefers old verse to new,
Stanzas to trees,
And blank verse to free.
Words flow too freely too often.
She repeats that.
Each time I see her, she repeats,
“Loose lips, and sticks and stones,
And penny for your thoughts.”
She likes the old ways, the olden days.
She doesn’t like my way.
My way is too dull, too lurid, too boring.
She said she honestly doesn’t know
Why I bother.
She doesn’t get it.
Not me, not anything about me.
She doesn’t understand anything.
She doesn’t understand me.
I said that: “You don’t even know.” (Me)
In the gaze of the other 