LGBT Poetry: What it Means

On Twitter, Instagram, D.U.P., YouTube and Tik Tok, I have been presenting my work as LGBT Poetry. It seems fitting. Because, at its core, it IS LGBT poetry. But, this isn't to say that only members of that community (of which I am a part) can read it or view the reading and appreciate it. I like to think my work is universal because it is a rare occasion that I specify the sex of the person I am writing about. Since none of it is gender specific, I feel everybody of any orientation (LGBT or otherwise) can enjoy and relate to it.


 I want people to view my work as "safe." As a place where anybody can take something away and interpret in the manner of their own choosing. While, on those sites, I DO label it as LGBT, I don't want people to believe that's solely what it is. Doing so would imply that any of it has a specific meaning. And I have said in the past that none of my Tragedies mean anything other than what the individual reader believes they mean.


My interpretations of the work are my own. I do not believe they are the only CORRECT interpretations. Nobody is wrong in what they believe each piece represents or means. But...to myself, they are LGBTQIA because, I have always felt that I would like to read poetry by a gay man who made me feel represented. As it turns out, I'm (quite obviously or I wouldn't be doing it anymore) the only homosexual poet that I know who has ever made me feel represented in any way shape or form.


But relationships...all relationships between humans have many things in common. At the same time, each relationship is unique in itself. I feel that my work capitalizes on all things we, as a species, have in common on an interpersonal level.


Many (if not all) of the pieces are written from the sphere of my schizotypal disorder, my obsessive compulsive behavior disorder and my anxiety issues. Once again, I feel represented by my own work. I think nobody other than somebody with this mixture of elements (I say "elements" rather than illnesses) could come up with writing of this nature.


They say that you should write what you have always wanted to read. I feel that way about my work: Everything I create is something that I wish had existed at some point in my life. Because, all throughout my existence, I have never felt (and here comes that word again) represented. A great deal of people in the LGBT community feel the same way. Perhaps my work is the ONLY work that will ever make ME, personally, feel that way. Some works have scratched the surface of my individuality, namely, the works of Poe, Lovecraft and Cantodea, but they haven't really said anything of me. While they said things TO me, they never said things OF me.


Some people believe that I constantly write about the same thing, and to them I say, "Well...I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder." Writing about "the same topics" over and over again is a habit of that element. And I just have so much to say about those topics. The two things I write the most about are love and death. Those are the topics with which I am most obsessed. In fact, just last night, the knowledge that I one day will cease to exist struck me.


Fortunately, however, I will have left behind a substantial body of work. And I REALLY hope (and this is the main reason why I have been doing this) that some member of the LGBTQIA community will read what I have created and feel like somebody understands them. While it is not necessarily utterly LGBT material, that is the main reason: I want somebody (at least one person in that community) to have what I never had. What I still do not have except for this conduit through which I create for myself. I want people to feel represented.


--Vate.

(2517)