Fair is not fair May 22, 2013

 

 

I’m sure I’ll keep returning to this poem, just as I have the trickle up poem and the change of priorities poems because they lay it all out, as painful as it might be for me to read.

Why painful? Why should I care what someone does with their own life or why they decide to live by their own rules?

Good questions I can’t really answer, except in that I have invested more than a year of my life trying to make sense of this storm that swept through and can only marginally say I know more today than I did when the first clouds appeared on the horizon.

The poem goes so much against the grain when it comes to my sense of morality that I struggle to get through it, even though ultimately, she is right – right and wrong count for nothing, and fair and unfair bind you from getting what you so desperately want – or in this case, what she thinks she deserves.

The poem is a rebellion against those judgements people like me make about her, and in that regard, it is almost as painful as the forgiveness poem she directed at me last summer and which sent me into a tail spin.

Whether or not this poem is directed at me, it hits a nerve, because it is saying out right she does what she does, and nobody has the right to judge her for it.

This is her life.

The intense honesty of this poem, the refusal to be humbled or made to feel guilty about what she admits is her life, makes this one of the most remarkable poems I have read by her so far, something so powerful in its deliberation, I feel ashamed all over again for what transpired last spring into the summer.

The poem is not free of bitterness. Especially about her lot in life. And it is not without guilt or perhaps the sudden realization that she should not be condemning herself for doing things that bring her joy.

Nothing is worse than putting yourself on trial.

I would like to argue against the poem’s theme, to say that most people live with the consequences of their actions, and guilt is part of that. But a year of reading her poetry and getting a glimpse inside her has answered many of the questions I raised – about her frank talk of her sexuality, and need to be recognized, appreciated, and rewarded for her gifts, as a person and as a writer.

And how inappropriate it is for anyone like me to pass judgement on her, when, in fact, we all lack the courage to do what she does, even though we want to do exactly the same things.

More on this poem later.

 

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