It's a poem, not a diary

[RiverNotch]

maybe i should write down when a poem of mine is a diary-entry or not, since i seem to alternate between them. the problem is when i do write a diary-poem, it usually involves a specific facet of myself that i've hyper-magnified to make the poem more, er, poetic, such as in that poem i wrote about a straight man (the events in there are mostly true, but i'm as straight as a Euclidean line -- i just really, really liked kissing), and when i write a poem from a different point of view, the symbols are wholly based on what i know, or the narrative works as a sort of metaphor for what i'm experiencing, such as in that divorce poem (i've never actually experienced marriage; i don't even personally know anyone on the brink of breaking it off). ---- and i have a feeling this sort of holds true for pretty much every other poet. i suppose everything we create is inevitably tied to ourselves, the practice is that we just shouldn't take it as seriously. gluck's murderess may not have been herself, but i don't think she could have written that piece without understanding all the dark words such as "Hell" and "slitting", or without accessing that certain dark side of her that wished for the annihilation of her children.