Stripping Down in Verses: The Art of Baring the Truth (or Lies) on the Page

       That man in a slick olive green polo-shirt is looking right at you, and you think it’s good, it’s a good sign, since all you want to do is to hop on that man’s lap and crumple his collar against your grasp. While doing so, you should notice those colossal, hazel stare: a burst of greenish brown specks like splinters of a tattering surf board in collision with a surge of raging sea water. Yes, in short that man got you bad, so damn bad you don’t mind drowning or becoming a lost cause in the surge of those vast, hazel gazes.    
      So, what now? Of course, you want him to get up on his seat and drift towards you. But that comes later. First, you have to make him believe that you’re the real deal, the cherry on top of his favorite slice of dreamscapes, sea shanties and jazz riffs. But then, how are you supposed to make that happen? How do you lure a man like that, to make him do what you want him to do to you? Well, there’s only one thing that comes to my mind to answer those question: Se•duc•tion.    
      Wikipedia define seduction as the process of deliberately enticing a person, to lead astray, as from duty, rectitude, or the like; to corrupt, to persuade or induce to engage in sexual behavior. Sounds exciting, right? No, not really. In fact, to tell you the truth, I’m just a raging dork with a pouty showgirl’s exhibitionist mind and a hard laboring, hard playing, hard man’s will—that, my dear readers, is why I write poetry.    
      All poems are seduction. If you want someone’s presence badly, you can’t just rely on those gooey glue-like cosmic forces that are supposed to bond two serendipitous souls together. And besides, that’s bogus anyways, things like that only happen in movies. If you want to drive someone nuts over you, you have to work that person’s every single senses from arrhythmia to madness— the same concept as writing poetry.  A good poet invokes the reader’s senses by the strip tease of his or her lines and stanzas on the page like how a good seductress leave sensual trails to make someone chase them like a lost puppy or if she’s really good— like a wilderness cat, in heat.    
      I, myself got into this fiasco of writing poems by the lure of those scheming, conniving poets. The first poetry book that I've read is from the bad boy of contemporary poetry— Charles Bukowski’s “Love is a Dog from Hell.” In this notoriously acclaimed book of poems, Bukowski hypnotize his readers by going straight for the jugular. His poetry is not for the meek at heart. He is, however, very funny and very direct. Some of the poems will echo with near brilliance. Bukowski did have the ability to cut some very clean lines. There is even surprising lyrical poignancy: “I drive around the streets/an inch away from weeping, /ashamed of my sentimentality and/possible love.”  Who wouldn’t trip recklessly smitten for a man with swagger like that?    
      And then, to make things more amusingly complicated, I got introduced to more brilliant array of poets like Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Sharon Olds, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, Bob Dylan and the list just goes on and on. Now, I’m just a word-playing, word-hungry junkie who just can’t get enough of witnessing and experiencing the wonders of reading and crafting poems.    
      However, my favorite of all the reasons why I write poetry is because of the readers. Poetry readers are willing victims who will gladly offer you their necks, if you promise to do something interesting with them. In short, these people are thoughtful but fearless bunch who will hold your hand to the unknown and never let go for as long as you give them something succulent to gnaw on.  If ever I’ll get myself a lover, I want to be a poetry reader.    
      So, going back to that slick guy with hazel eyes, whose intense stare is fixated at you: You can drown in those gazes, you think. So you want to ravage him, tell him some make-up truth or lies base from facts to make him stay. He has greenish brown eyes, explosion of lush colors like a broken surf board being bombarded by a tidal surge. So it’s a lost cause, a dangerous affair, but you don’t mind— because in poetry, baby, that’s how you dive in.