Back to the coliseum May 15, 2013

 


I’m totally screwed up when trying to keep up with her most recent poems, partly because I keep going back and reassessing poems, I’ve already assumed I knew the meaning of.

But I suspect I have caught up now and can get onto her most recent posting, trying to avoid the misconceptions that sent me scrambling back to reexamine poems she posted previously.

I got lulled into believing that some of the poems she posted were about her failed romance, missing the sudden change of tone and the possible nasty redirection of some at me. Even her poem of liberation may well be her shedding any guilt and telling her critics (and she sees me as this I suppose) to not judge her.

The scribe poem came out of the blue since there seemed to be no inspiration for it, nothing done on my part to cause her to post it as a reaction.

The show poem she recently posted is another one – at least in part – aimed at me, and again it is difficult for me to figure out what inspired it.

She can’t possibly know about this journal (I hand write it and post it nowhere) or even my poetry notebooks from which only a precious few ideas make their way to my blog – and yet this poem of her seems to know all I write in private as if she has a psychic spirit looking over my shoulder as I write.

Which, of course, is impossible.

She is either building a case against me based on her own imagination (that comes dangerously close to the truth) or is writing about someone else doing things in a public way she has concerns about.

Let me examine this poem as if it is actually about me, then step back from it to look at it potentially being about someone else.

The central theme is that “the show” doesn’t really exist, except in the minds of people like me, who create it all out of smoke and mirrors, while she has to live with the consequences.

She says she should be used to this, those who “gather behind stage right curtain” to make their comic entrance – to pounce and make the audience laugh.

The hero always cringes, yet must carry on with the show, even though there really is no show.

It is something manufactured by people who display false sympathy, and then engage in speculation, as if “they” actually knew what was going on, “voyeuristic” people who she compares to the crowds during Roman times that came out to get their kicks watching Christians getting slaughtered, “a purely sadistic thing.” So that people like her who are just trying to get on with their lives “become subject of some grand entertainment.”

What inspired all this – as I said – is a complete mystery, if it is aimed at me, since I’ve done nothing to provoke her recently, except for my poetry posts, most of which are benign due mostly to my ever-vigilant cyber nanny.

If she was aware of this journal or my poetry journal, I might understand her outrage. But I share none of these with anyone, and is written in notebooks, not on a computer (so even in the unlikely chance my computer might be hacked, or the owner of my office would search my work computers as he’s done in the past) none of this would be accessible. I am, after all, making assumptions about her life, which may or may not be accurate.

This poem of hers bases its attack on her own assumptions about what I might be thinking or doing.

I suspect this poem is some kind of response to me, perhaps I’ve given something away about my thinking in the poems I have posted, or her reading into poems meaning that I never really intended, or perhaps some lingering rage from last summer she still needs to vent.

She admits that life requires change, and that people are pressed by issues like guilt and duty, but she resists being influenced by personal attacks on her especially when these are based on lies, “vengeance, revenge, fear” and an enduring “grudge.” Or worse, someone’s decision based on their daily mood.

Again, the poem might not be about me at all, and yet, I cannot imagine her acquiring more than one arch enemy like me in such short a time. So, you have to wonder what prompted her to open up again the heated warfare from last summer, as it is clear from her scribe poem that I am back on her radar.

The question is, how to I get back to that point where I am “clever and illusive,” rather than the creator of a show in which she seen herself as the primary entertainment, a Christian cornered, if not by deadly lions, then by ruthless gladiators.


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