I was planning on doing this on a joke like deez nuts or vine compilations, but I think it's really easy to do things as a joke instead of legitimately. Beyond that, I think it's easy to mask parts of ourselves with humor. Something I'm really grateful for is an environment where I can feel like I matter; and I think it's kind of ungrateful to mask all of the things that make me awesome just because of thinly veiled insecurity. Both as an act of rebellion towards myself, and as an exemplification of my topic, I'm going to be legitimate.
I know it's not cool to like poetry, and quite frankly that it comes off very pretentious. But it's always been something that has deeply resonated with me. The ability to eschew expectation and create a new standard for oneself was mind-boggling to me. To think that I'm not confined to presumptions or rules in grammar and syntax- like Emily Dickinson's capitalization and hyphenations, and E.E. Cumming's spacing, really broke my perceptions of the limitations I was/still do face.
Not I nor anybody is confined to those dreaded adjectives we use to describe one another like "funny" or "smart" or "annoying". We can each be described in different ways. We can be metaphors and we can be contradictory and most importantly we can be abstracted. I am so grateful for poetry because it allows for the expansion of what I once viewed as concrete, and eschewing those limitations has taught me more than just about the ability to defy boundaries in terms of gender and sexuality, but in regards to all aspects of myself, even those not quantifiable with words.
Furthermore, for someone like myself with a lot of built up layers and walls, poetry forces vulnerability. Really good poetry, the kind that means something, teaches you something about yourself- even if it just teaches you a new hue or tone of emotion. Poetry goes beyond Milk & Honey superficiality. Some poems are so close to me I feel like a part of my soul has bonded with them, so showing them to anybody is like showing a part of myself I don't want anybody to see. I'm thankful for poetry for all of the vulnerability it makes me face, and what better way to say thank you than by sharing my favorite poem --
I Can Write the Saddest Lines Tonight
I can write the saddest lines tonight.
Write for example: 'The sky is fractured
and they shiver, blue, those stars in the distance.'
The night wind turns in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest lines tonight
I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like these I held her in my arms.
I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could I have not loved her huge, still eyes.
I can write the saddest lines tonight.
To think I don't have her, to feel I have lost her.
Hear the vast night, vaster without her.
Lives fall on the soul like dew on the grass
What does it matter that I couldn't keep her.
The night is fractured and she is not with me
That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off,
my soul is not content to have lost her.
As though to reach her, my sight looks for her.
My heart looks for her: she is not with me
The same night whitens, in the same branches.
We, from that time, we are not the same.
I don't love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the breeze to reach her.
Another's kisses on her, like my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body, infinite eyes.
I don't love her, that's certain, but perhaps I love her.
Love is brief; forgetting lasts so long.
Since, on these nights, I held her in my arms,
my soul is not content to have lost her.
Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer,
and these are the last lines I will write for her.
-- Pablo Neruda
