Poems should take risks.
If you just like to be liked, pose like a puppy for a photo instead.
I DON’T believe in easy poems, or poems that write themselves.
To be technical about it, up to 1%, I can believe that poems sometimes actually write themselves out.
But 99% of my belief is in poetry as work.
As art, as craft, as something that an artist makes.
A poem is a work of art that the writer creates, revises, polishes, and perfects.
Poems that are an accident are, well, an accident.
I don’t like accidents.
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I like intelligent rhymes.
New, creative, imaginative, wow! rhymes that suggest a lot of work, or a truly brilliant mind.
I have a strong aversion for rhymes that I’ve seen and heard before.
I call them easy, lazy rhymes—
Fly and high.
Hi, sigh, and goodbye.
If you think you are clever rhyming sky and high, or star and far, go back to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star!”
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When poems go for the easy, and often, obvious choices, they die.
At least, for me.
I’m a little demanding of poems that rhyme.
There are not many great rhymers in our time.
I’m not impressed by rap that rhyme tap and map, and nap, and sap.
Or force reality with creativity and electability in order to have marketability.
If poems rhyme, I expect them to say something earthshaking, groundbreaking, deathdefying.
There’s a reason there’s not many rap albums in my music library.
And absolutely nothing in my playlist of favorites.
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I love Love.
I read a lot of love poems.
Aside from books that I buy, I read what’s free on the Internet.
But I really hate a lot of wannabe poets writing bad love poems.
Thinking about it now, I think this is the reason why I hate newbie poets who are clueless:
They have ruined love poetry for me.
They have flooded the Internet with their shallow musings on love.
They have rendered love so trite and sad.
Commonplace, ordinary, cheap.
And in a sense, ugly.
And boring.
Because, if we cannot speak of love in fresh images and beautiful phrases, what are we doing perverting the already beautiful things said about love?
Why are we harping again about red roses and thorns and lovers walking in the rain?
Some people read, and have read some, you know.
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I can understand the need for approval in social media.
I truly understand the hunger for Facebook ‘likes’ and hearts.
Everybody wants validation.
Especially if they’re not very good in the first place.
I mean, because if we know we’re good, why would we need the public’s approval?
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Ikaw at ako
Sa tula
Pinagtugma.
is not a poem!
But at least 50 people can relate to this.
And they will, sadly, ‘like’ it on my post.
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I like being liked as a writer.
Because I have already made a career of writing.
But because I’m not serious about cooking, I don’t mind people not liking my food and cooking posts.
I’m also not a commercial model, so I’m not really disappointed that people don’t like my fashion and modeling photos.
I have about 32,000 photos on my iPhone right now.
Not all of them make it to my Facebook and Instagram accounts.
That’s because I only choose to put forward my best works.
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I’m pretty sure I have written over a hundred stories (including flash fiction) in the last twenty years of my writing life.
But except for the Palanca winners, I hardly share my stories.
Now, if you can think a little bit about that.
Why, why, oh, why?/PN
