Gary Lucero Writer

Data, an android on the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation, defined friendship like this:

 

"As I experience certain sensory input patterns, my mental pathways become accustomed to them. The inputs eventually are anticipated and even missed when absent."

 

This is a good definition of friendship, but it's also the definition of love.

 

People are often attracted to each other, not just physically, but through all sorts of different means. For example, one person might strike up a conversation with another and find they have a lot in common, or they find the same types of things to be humorous. This could turn into a relationship, and they could soon find themselves "in love."

 

But is love a thing? Is it some chemical coursing through our veins, or a vapor that snakes through the universe, infecting humans?

 

More likely than not, it's just a word that we assign to our feelings. To those "sensory input patterns" and "mental pathways" we become accustomed to.

 

Even the word "feelings" is a bit odd, like they are something other than thoughts and sensory inputs. Humans are more like the android Data than we wish to believe, because we think, we touch, we hear and we feed all this information into our brains, and it tells us what we feel.

 

Our brains "inform" us that we are now "in love."

 

Not that any of this discounts those feelings. When we have that overwhelming desire to be with someone, to see their face, feel their hand in ours, to hear their voice, and to kiss their lips, it sure feels like love.

 

It feels like the greatest thing to have ever happened to us.

I am honored to annouce that I read my new poem, Love, on the Cultivating Voices live Facebook video program. This was on 12/01/24, and I was one of about 30 poets who read. I read from my forthcoming book of poetry, The Unknown Race.

 

Look for me at the 25:48 mark in the video, which is linked above.

 

If you're interested in pre-ordering The Unknown Race, you can do so here: The Unknown Race eBook. The print version should be available to preorder closer to the book's release on 02/14/25.

 

I've never been a great fan of traditional poetry, but I've loved song lyrics since I was a child.

 

I was drawn to the playful and interesting interplay of words in The Beatles' song, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" from the album by the same name, or the sad lyrics to "She's Leaving Home" from that same album.

 

Then there's Cat Stevens, whose songs were mostly sad in the early 1970s. I loved tracks like "Where Do the Children Play" from his album, Tea for the Tillerman, which made the world seem desperate and unfit for mankind, or "If I Laugh" from Teaser and the Firecat, which spoke of the end of a relationship and how sad it left him.

 

I also loved Elton John as a child, and he was typically more upbeat, with songs like "Texan Love Song," a tongue-in-cheek song about how rednecks feel about hippies, from Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player. He had his sad songs, but he wasn't such a downer.

 

As I exited my tweens and entered my teens, I switched from my mostly-AM music to my older brother's FM-music, singer songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, and bands like The Who and Aztec Twostep. They were mostly melancholy, but the lyrics were often more mature, and they ventured into loss, politics, and drug addiction.

 

This expanded my horizons with so many incredible songs, and with lyrics that dazzled me. I didn't know music could be this good, or that anyone had the ability to create such amazing landscapes with words.

 

Singer songwriters became my thing, but I loved rock'n'roll, so I didn't just listen to the more folkie stuff. I loved bands like Jethro Tull, The Who, and Yes. I also dabbled in The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Santana, and many others, but they didn't have the same appeal as someone like Neil Young, or the other bands I mentioned.

 

But what does this have to do with poetry?

 

This is the poetry I listened to as a child, teen, and adult. And to this day, my mainstays are great singer-songwriters. There's Neil Young, a man who has always been one of the most prolific and important songwriters of our time. Yes, who had the incredible Jon Anderson as the main lyricist up until around 2005. The Who, where Pete Townshend wrote most of the band's iconic songs. And Roger Waters, the guy who wrote most of the great Pink Floyd classics and continues to create meaningful music to this day.

 

There are others, bands like Rush, Van der Graaf Generator, ELP, and more, which have wonderful lyrics and incredible music, and they all helped define poetry for me, and guide me as I write my own.

 

So while I may not read a lot of poetry, I've always been exposed to poetry in the lyrics of the music I listen to, and that's what shapes my own.