I’M PRETTY smart.
Always had excellent grades. Topped the class.
I’m pretty outstanding with academic work.
So, I kinda believed I’m smarter than most.
So, I really hate poetry that makes me feel stupid.
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I dig it that poetry can be an intellectual challenge.
And that can be fun. I like that, too.
I mean, I feel smarter if I can solve a puzzle.
And what’s more challenging than trying to read things that aren’t there on the page?
Reading between the lines, and beyond.
But sometimes, that just feels like intellectual masturbation.
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Don’t get me wrong. I like masturbation.
As much as I like poetry.
But when academics overdo it, when academic poets write poems that leave me feeling stupid, I don’t like it.
I don’t like participating in their circle of jerks.
They can enjoy their jerks’ poetry by themselves. Count me out.
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I like poetry that are easy to understand.
Poetry that reminds me of the things that my body forgot.
Poetry that helps me remember how it is to be human.
I like sensual poetry. Sensuous?
I like poetry that makes me feel something other than stupid.
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I like opera. Italian, French, German.
I often don’t really understand what is said, but I have some idea.
I mean, opera has stories!
Opera has moods I can understand; characters and other elements I can pick up.
Opera don’t make me feel stupid.
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Okay. So maybe, it’s the music in opera.
But that’s what I like in some poetry, too.
I may not totally get what is said, but if it’s musical enough, if the music is sensuous enough, that’s enough for me.
So yeah, musicality is a big consideration for me in writing, and evaluating, poetry.
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Maybe, that’s why I’m most effective as a writer of poetry for children.
I write simple poems. Not very grand ideas.
But they are easy to understand.
And they are musical.
I pay a lot of attention in the sound of the words I choose and use.
Just like that—“choose and use”.
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I’m also a pretty accomplished lyric poet.
I write a lot about love and longing.
Poems to woo the elusive men.
I mean, it’s easier for women to attract men. They have vaginas.
I’m a gay man.
I only have my mouth. I mean, my mouthful. I mean, my words.
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So yeah, I’m pretty smart.
I use my smarts to woo men.
And so as not to be very obvious, I don’t use common, ordinary language.
I use poetry.
I write poetry to lure men.
I think words are sexy. I think poetry is sexy.
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I think the real challenge in becoming a poet is how to seduce the world.
Men, women, children, LGBTQ and whatever other letters there are in that rainbow coalition.
I mean, if your words cannot move a person, cannot cause an erection or desire, can you just shut up?
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Sure, sure, arouse your readers intellectually.
Masturbate them mentally.
Just do not leave them feeling hanging. Feeling stupid.
If readers do not orgasm with understanding of your poetry, you are just a jerk.
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Okay, maybe readers don’t need to actually climax. (But it’s best they do!)
I mean, just get them close enough to fake it.
A lot of people fake orgasm.
But you have to get your readers close enough.
They can’t fake it if your first stanza sucks.
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I will not define poetry for you.
But this, I will say: I only believe in poems that capture heaven and earth, and the whole gamut of human experience, on the page.
I believe in poems that make me see heaven and earth and humanity in a new, fresh, way.
I like poems that make me aware.
That surprise me with a new awareness.
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I hate cliches.
I hate reading poems that say the same thing again and again in pretty much the same way as I have read or heard before.
(And I told you I’m a voracious reader of poetry and other literatures.)
I want to be pleasantly surprised when I read poetry.
I want my time for reading to be rewarded.
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Look, I don’t mind listening to the same idea if they are told in a new, exciting, seductive, perhaps even shocking way.
It is my contention that there are really no new stories that can impress the literati.
And not many new grand ideas that can surprise me.
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I mean, I’ve seen them all.
Same-sex sex, orgies, midget sex, double penetration, two-poles-in-one-hole-plus-some-golf-balls, and all the porno flicks and f*cks you missed.
I’ve been rich. I’ve been poor.
I’ve been married. I’ve been widowed.
I’ve been on Grindr!
(To be continued) (facebook.com/peter.s.nery)(500tinaga@gmail.com)/PN
