validation

This poem is featured in the inaugural Queens Poets & Poems Exhibit at Queens Borough Hall for National Poetry Month, April 1st-31st, 2012. The exhibition is curated by the Queens Poet Laureate through 2013, Paolo Javier.

validation

it seems to me validation
is the muse’s silent killer..
you write
and stand on a street corner
holding a sign,
or shouting from a mountaintop,
or thrashing in the sea,
waiting for someone to notice.
we writers have to ask ourselves
over and over –
does it matter?
in so many ways
the greats, and others like them,
have said – write not for an audience.
the purest writing comes from you,
unadulterated.
praise or criticism may come afterwards –
or alternately, you may have only silence.
but whatever you are faced with,
i tell you –
picking up the pen is your validation.
you have realized the grand illusion –
created something out of nothing.
and do you know what else?
have you considered how much
of your audience is invisible –
simply part of the pen and ink,
the walls of your heart,
the fragments of memory..
spirits of the past,
circumstances of the present,
possibilities of the future –
star-trails and planets
and the universe all one –
it all moves to an infinite,
luminous bloom
when you take that breath,
that step – to create.

how much more validation
do you need?