Make a List
Listen to the people in your life. Are there those among them who engage in mindless prattle, complain, nag, and criticize, or potshot and play off a third person at your expense?
If so, they pollute your creative environment and sap you of the juices that make your rhyme, free verse, and prose come alive.
As a wise and gifted writer once advised a gathering of poets, “Make a list of the culprits, whether relative, friend, or foe, and when you get back home, call each of them on the phone and tell them to GET THE HELL OUT OF YOUR LIFE!”
Copyright © 2001 Frank Zahn. Published in Alive with Thoughts and Feelings: Prose and Other Poetry, Vancouver Books (Hardcover Edition) 2009; Perceptions: Prose and Other Poetry, Grove 49 eBooks (Kindle Edition) 2016; Heartfelt: Short Prose and Poetry, Vancouver Books (Kindle Edition) 2023; Adelaide Literary Magazine, Number 80, September 2025, https://adelaidemagazine.org/between-sixteen-and-sixty-one.