A Postmodern Moment

I was just reading over some of the comments in my Postpoems page (this was sort of an aside to looking through the poems to find one that might be usable in performance), and one girl's comments about a poem struck me. In one sentence, she was saying that the poem could be interpreted in so many different ways; in the next, she was saying that nobody could deny the meaning behind what i was saying.

Huh?

If the poem can be "interpreted in so many different ways," apparently i was NOT communicating. Now, there are two types of poems on my Postpoems Page. One type is very direct. There is no doubt about the subject, or my feelings about it. This, at least in my opinion, was VERY blatant. The metaphors may have been a bit over the top, i'll admit, but it wasn't THAT inexplicable. The other type are poems i usually refer to as Myth Sticks, which are really metaphorical Rorschach blots . . . a person's response to one of THOSE poems, and their interpretation of it, really reveals more about them than it does the poem. And, in that case, that's the general idea. I don't specifically mark them or set them apart from the others (although i did at one time).

Other comments i've received have also left me scratching my head. One frequent visitor always makes reference to vegetarian, vegan, animal rights, etc., and somehow ties this into the poems i've written. I'm cool with that on the Myth Sticks poems, but, on some of the poems this reader missed the point entirely. Am i not communicating effectively, or is that person just using a random line as an excuse to mount a soapbox? Now, i have nothing against vegan or vegetarian diets. I simply cannot EXIST on one. For the record, i'm an omnivore. My eating habits include such horrible things as refined sugar, pork, mechanically separated chicken, cholesterol, complex carbs, and FAT! OH, THE HUMANITY!! I can pratically hear the vegans scattering as i approach, lest they smell the carnivorous pheromones and become infected with a desire for a LAMB GYRO. If you don't like what i eat, don't watch me eat. And, above all, don't LECTURE me . . . because that's apt to provoke me . . . and since i'm always being told that "you are what you eat," i am one fucked-up chimera, but it's better than being a walking salad.