Beat poet Allen Ginsberg wrote: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness". Ginsberg passed away in 1997, but his soul has to see this present generation destroyed by madness as well, although what is being destroyed are not only the best minds, but also the very ordinary ones, like yours truly's.

It will be to your relief to know that my poetry, destroyed mind aside, is not about the maudlin. I choose to write about the mundane, such as the last bastard who broke my heart. Just kidding. Still, when it comes to words, I am hardly circumspect, and so may the gods have mercy on my culpable soul. Not wanting to be an iconoclast, though, I shall put polemics aside and simply write what I feel. Hey, it's the poststructural, deconstruction era in the literary world, and I'm no exception.

What is poetry? Anything that doesn't fill a paper from left to right and has bad punctuation. No, no, the word "poem" comes from the Latin poema, something composed and created. Poems can be defined as composition characterized by compact language in which words are well chosen for their sound (such as rhyme and rhythm) and suggestive power or imagery, as well as for their meaning, connotative or otherwise. Edgar Allan Poe described a poem as "a rhythmical creation of beauty".

While my poetry can hardly be described as rhythmical or beautiful, they are creations, so that's one out of three. Not bad, given the fact that I'm not much of a poet. =)

It has been taught to me that the enjoyment of poetry is greatly increased by a knowledge of its technique. A good poem was supposed to have harmony of form and content, of thought and language, of mood and movement. Thus, in an effort to learn more about technicalities, in my freshperson year at the University of the Philippines I judiciously read about stuff such as the common meters in English poetry: the iambic foot, trochaic foot, anapestic foot, dactylic foot as well as less common foots (not "feet", "foots" sounds better as it rhymes with "boots"): spondic, pyrrhic and others that have vanished in the cobwebbed corners of my mind.

In writing, however, I hardly ever pay attention to whatever technicalities I learned about poetry, not because I don't want to but mostly because I am so bent on taking whatever load it is off my chest at the moment that I lamentably forget rhythm, meter, verse, feet etc. Which puts in question the nature of these writings, in other words, are they really poetry, and if so, are they worth reading at all? Well, I leave that for you to judge. I lay my poems prostrate upon thy feet. Audacity is mine, vehemence is my tool, and to disconcert is my aim. Oh, and what an arduous task I ask of thee, to read these writings in the name of friendship.

Unless you are the latest bastard who broke my heart. Or any of the past bastards, for that matter. No, I am no longer in conflagration over the insults you heaped upon my cavilling self. But still I wish thee ill.

Nah, just kidding. Of course not. You helped me grow up, that's what you did. Not that I needed any help. But you did make me write more. And for that I am grateful. And may the gods have mercy upon your unappreciative, unrepentant, unforgiving soul.