Continued from: Racism

There are the forums that act as Moderator schools.  I have hardly ever been to one that has any Hispanics; I will say it right off.  The reason?  Your guess is as good as mine is, but I will talk about my personal experience. 

I was at Able Muse for a very short time, constantly under pressure from a female moderator who had read my pm’s to a friend (something she should have never done) that just happens to have my same name, Sergio.  She decided I was trying to seduce him online, virtually, with a poem that I had dedicated to him.  She insinuated in front of the entire community that I was trying to, well, let’s not use the word just yet, let’s say, take him to my virtual bed.  I had no idea where he lived or what he looked like.  I didn’t know his age, and that was important to me.  I don’t go to bed with anyone over the age of 50 or under the age of 37 (actually I have not gone to bed with anyone for years and I don’t intend to do so). 

She had no idea there were a couple of PhD’s reading my posts and that when I responded to her insult, I responded with the guidance of these two friends.  I quoted classroom text in literary theory, backed up by years of research done by writers from all over the world, republished in places like Jestor.  But regardless, I have researched, read, and edited at least four Master’s thesis, and two PhD thesis on my own.  I know how to do research and I was not about to let her run all over me in a public forum.  All I did was tell her she did not know a thing about basics  literary critical thinking, I provided the proof for my statement, after which I proceeded to tell her she had offended me by insinuating I was trying to fuck a member of the forum virtually, with, of all things, a poem.  That is right, my friend in the bathroom was not a mechanical skinless object, it was a poem, a poem about tattoos.  The sad thing was I did not have time to recuperate that poem, so it is now lost.  It was written in both English and French, one of my many bilingual poems.

I was exiled from Abel Muse.  So, I tried another of these moderator online schools, I was curious now as to what could happen.  I registered, posted critique to a few poems, and posted one of my own poems.  The title, Raw.  The poem was intentionally racist.  I posted it and when I returned the next day, the poem was nowhere to be seen, it was deleted without an explanation, nothing.   Forget about freedom of speech and my First Amendment rights. I never returned.

This experience forced me to listen and carefully evaluate everything said and done around me, even in places like my religion.  It was a turning point in my experience as a person, not just as a writer.  The more I thought about it the more I realized it had happened before and not just to me but to a lot of other people that were either Hispanic or gay.  God have mercy on us if they were both, or even worse if they were, a black Hispanic transgendered person.
          It was around this point I started to post much more frequently at a forum I had found around a year before these two incidents.  It is a great place.  Not that it is not with its share of problems, wherever there are people there will also be problems.  But this forum is different.  I am kind of sorry that they people chosen every month are largely passed by in the IBPC.  They are all excellent writers with great poems that represent the forum with a lot of dignity.  They've got no one to envy.  It is Wild Poetry Forum.  In this forum I have been showered with love, affection, respect, and my poetry has always been critique with the utmost respect.  People, the administrators, the moderators, and the poets here are different.  They shine, they know what it is we are all doing there and they don't let anyone down.






to be continues....................................................