Deep-ish thoughts

I recently had to choose a bunch of my poems for a reading at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. The theme of the meeting was the monstrous in literature. I realized a few things about my monstrous poetry in the process of making choices for the reading. In most of the poems, if there were two intelligent beings, one was male and the other female. The viewpoint character was almost always male. The viewpoint character almost never dismembered/devoured/made wallpaper out of any female characters. The reverse, however, was true in many of the poems. In a few of the poems, none of the major characters victimized anybody. I don't think analyzing one's own deep psychological motives is fruitful, but I did write this poem as a result of my observation.


The Poet Debates an Imagined Reader


What is it with you
and these poems about women?
Your protagonists, all of them male,
and all of them you,
are eaten, killed, turned into furniture,
by females of one kind or another.
The best they can hope for
is to lose their women to
alien monsters,
natural disasters,
ecological catastrophes,
mysterious viruses;
is this something from your childhood?

They are viewpoint characters,
not protagonists,
and never me.
Don't mistake the character for the author;
that's the mark of a noob.

Weak, very weak.
Why should we read any more of your crap?


end