I WANT to fall in love all the time.
Like everyday.
I like to be infatuated with a boy.
Or boys like you.
***
What does it mean to be in love?
To be obsessed?
To be desirous?
To be infatuated?
These are the details needed in love poetry.
***
The traps are many for poetry not to succeed.
Old and overused images.
Sometimes dead as doornails cliches.
They are dull images because they were once exciting and shiny new, but no longer.
***
I read a lot.
So I kinda know what I like in life.
And in poetry.
You can say I have developed my taste for poetry.
Do I want to waste five minutes reading stuff that aren’t sparkling and new?
No!
***
I want to be always young, always new, always brilliant.
And poetry feeds me that.
14 lines, 12, eight, four.
Poetry that short always grabs my attention.
What is something new in less than 15 lines, less than 5 lines, that can make me full of love and brimming with sweet memories?
Maybe with sweet reflection?
***
I am often turned off by lengthy poetry.
But if I continue reading past line 12, that means that the poetry is good.
The key to lengthy poetry is to keep your readers excited for the end.
Let them read unstopped, unstoppable until the ending.
***
I’m the kind of reader who drops a poem in the middle.
I mean, I’m 54, and I’m not wasting any more second for a poem that becomes dull or boring in the middle.
I’m too old for that.
And there are many other poems that beg to be read!
***
When I’m in a bad mood, I read longish poetry.
And if they are truly bad, I remember the name of the writer, and ban them for life. Haha.
So that’s my argument for brevity.
I just don’t have the time.
***
That’s also my argument for newness of ideas or freshness of images.
I just don’t have the time for cliches.
***
I used to think that my own poetry is terrible because they are prosaic.
They’re mostly straightforward sentences.
But I always argue for the poetry of the situation.
Poetry that relies on new images as I see them.
***
In the end, my poetry is pretty well read.
By that I mean, popular.
I do not mean that they are high poetry, or up for some poetry prize judged by literature teachers.
I only mean that they are poetry that are read and loved by common people.
***
Oh, I got some prize-winning poetry, too.
Thanks to the Palanca Awards.
But no, I mostly write poetry for people who read the newspapers.
And for people who do not read the newspapers.
***
I am not competing with Shakespeare and the poets who write like dead writers.
I like pedestrian poetry.
Poetry for the Instagram generation.
Only that I want to be better than the average Instagram poem.
***
Again, it’s all about new images, fresh ideas.
Which only comes from new ways of seeing, new ways of saying.
The poet sees a lion in a slab of marble.
OK, it’s Michaelangelo’s sculpture, but that’s the metaphor or allusion to what I mean.
A poet sees love in a mug of coffee.
And tells us that two old people, her grandpa and grandma, drink from the same cup./PN
