Back where we started. May 2013

 


I’ll conclude this volume of my journal by one more revisit to one of her most recent controversial and angry poems, which I have analyzed previously, but need to look at more closely one more time before moving on.

As suggested one of my previous entries, she implies that much of the drama that is currently going on in and around her life may well be manufactured, most likely by those who have nothing to do but cause trouble

Enter Snagglepuss stage right.

My first impression of this poem is that she may be seeking a scapegoat in the ever deteriorating atmosphere on her current public world, people inside getting nervous about the outcome of a criminal trial that could negatively affect all of their lives. She may need someone to blame or at least something to distract her attention for a while, and thus we get a flash back to a more personal time last spring and all the trouble I caused with our former temporary boss.

The poem may well reflect her panic, even though in some ways, I suspect she is exaggerating  how bad the situation really is.

The poem may be a reaction to her own growing vulnerability or may well be one undisguised sign of growing rage inside her that has resurfaced over the last few weeks, percolating behind several poems, some of which may have even seemed too nice or too needy.

My own paranoia makes me think all her poems have something to do with me (when they clearly don’t) and I imagine her laying a poetic trap that might get me to respond and thus expose this “clever and illusive imp” to prove something about me she has been telling her compatriots, but few of them believe.

I’m always fearful of booby traps even when I actually believe she really isn’t out to get me, the way this poem suggests someone (possibly me) might be out to get her.

One has to separate fearful delusion from fact, and in this case, I’m hesitant to believe she is laying traps and that the poem is exclusively aimed at me. Someone in her position makes a lot of enemies, and this poem might well be about anyone or even nobody specific.

In this poem, she seems to suggest that she is shadow boxing, fighting against lies and distortions but with no way to get at the culprit.

As with a previous poem, this one seeks to establish personal strength amid her weaknesses, and attempts to down play the impression on the outside world that her world is in chaos.

Things are bad in town hall, and only the core group can survive, cheering each other on with false bravado.

She said she should be used to being the target, and having someone hiding behind the current to pounce and make the audience chuckle, and the hero cringe.

The show must go on, even if there really isn’t a show, but the vivid imagination of people who watch and wait, feigning sympathy, basing opinions on conjecture, people who think they know what’s going on when they really don’t, voyeuristic vultures, part of the sadistic crowd who would feed Christians to the Lions for the entertainment.

She admits change is necessary, but she isn’t going to bend to their imposition of guilt, though she will fight when she has to against lies and fearmongering, refusing to become the bait of somebody else’s sadistic pleasure.

The rage in the poem is unmistakable, returning to a tone of voice she had frequently used last summer. It is full of defiance and outrage, but no longer as someone on a winning team. She is accusing someone (possibly me) of being petty and vindictive.

But again, this all seems to come out of nowhere since there has been no direct contact since October and no clear motive for why she needs to last out now.

She has repositioned herself again as a victim, someone who is barely making her way in the world and is being waylaid by wolves on the way to grandma’s house, rather than the political insider who has operated during her time in our office and since.

She pictures herself as under attack, the subject of rumors and speculation, something she said she ought to be used to, and yet, she clearly feels wounded by it all.

I’m not saying the poem is about me, but it feels like it is, implying that I am lurking behind every tree ready to pounce on her.

There is some evidence to suggest I am the target of the poem, such as her use of the term “sweet refrain,” when she says, “I am a certain thing that does not bend beneath the sweet refrain of guilt,” possibly referring to poems and music I’ve posted.

The poem continues a theme that she started several weeks ago, continuing the concept that she is the victim, and that she must remain true to her mission – whatever that might be.

Again, I am struck by the idea that she is communicating, only I don’t completely understand or trust it.

As the rock song once said, “Love is a mine field,” but then so is hate, and the best response to this poem it to stay silent and try not to post anything she might misinterpret as a response. The last thing I need to do is set off a mine accidentally, or even intentionally.

Somehow, I get the feeling that we are indeed back where we started and that’s not a good place to be.

 

 2012 menu 


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Take me to the river July 7th, 2013

Image
  I'll go into the possible inspiration later for this poem she posted today for now she is once more delving into the concept of a row isolation and the struggle to retain strength during several years of adversity her geography is located next to a river named after Henry Hudson as she draws on an important metaphor for life as she lives it similar to an earlier poem that had her kneeling beside the sea in order to let things go, she can no longer retain in her life the wide Hudson with its never ending ripples sits on her doorstep a safe place she goes to breathe new life into her war worn bones and hot raw nerves she goes to the river side to keep from bursting what she is full to spilling and to avoid leaking out and wasting the essence of survival she cannot afford to lose the last few years she says have been truly deep and rough like the storms that rip across the river at times I'm strong she writes but sometimes I'm tired on the shore she watches the ships...
Read more

Hoping for the best June 24, 2013

Image
        I feel sorry for everybody involved in this trickle up game, not just the so called victims (we walk into    these things with our eyes open and are taken advantage of only because we have our own lusts we can’t control), but also our poet, who knows no other way of life, and must abide by the rules of a game she finds herself stuck in – and must do what she needs to do in order to retain any sense of self-worth. This is what she is, and this is what she must do. But even at her worst, her poetry suggests she is hardly the rascal the congressman’s PR person makes her out to be. She plays the hand of cards she gets dealt. She sometimes misreads the deck, such as assuming that her chef friend in New York was competent, when he was anything else but that. She also leaped onto the bandwagon when it came to our former temporary boss, assuming he could do more for her than it turns out he could, his temporary condition making him of little more use than a...
Read more

Ships that pass in the night July 9, 2013

Image
  A mentioned yesterday, there is more going on in regard to her latest poem than just the content. Again, we come to the possibility that our posts are somehow some kind of secret communication, wishful thinking on my part, of course, because I know she really hates me. I suspect I am deluding myself with hopeful thinking that she has maintained this one thin thread of communication between us, though this poem adds increasing evidence to that illusion – since I posted a poem that in some respects foreshadowed the one she posted this week. My poem included a video of me wandering a small beach in Jersey City near Liberty State Park, and was intended as a response to even earlier poem about borrowed lives. The poem goes I find no path among these river stones, so I make my own, turning this way then that, side steps that lead me nowhere, then back, my life made up of clumps like these small eddies filled with seaweed and people I need, but never see again when I move ...
Read more