As if to hammer the knife blade home, she posted a second
and even a third poem yesterday, calling my poetry “self-serving artistry” an
illusion fostered no doubt by my ability to weave words.
Poems are personal, not objective, and it is this
subjectiveness that shapes them.
Her poem is meant as a warning to herself or perhaps a “I
should have known better” observation not to mistake my poetry as an accurate
interpretation of who I really am, as if I had somehow pulled the wool over
hear eyes (whatever that means) making her believe otherwise.
The third poem of the day also plays against the metaphor of
poetry, carrying the idea of the second poem a little further, again more a
message to herself, looking at our relationship (if indeed that was what it
was) at a floating condition, affected by push and pull, and leading to an
eventual sinking – disaster, emotional turmoil, and the inability to sleep, and
her inability to make sense of it all, because it doesn’t make sense, no “Rhyme
to this reason because there is no reason behind the rhyme (meaning me as the
poet) and her conclusion is to let go.
The three poems show an amazing change in the emotional arch
in the space of one day, starting out with the sociopathic rage of the first
poem to a less violent but equally pointed judgement (of me) in the second poem,
to a much more circumspect internal review of how our time together impacted
her and her resolve to let go of it.
The fact that she crafted three great poems with such a huge
emotional arch in one day stuns me, an impressive piece of craft I would admire
if I were not the target of them and the ultimate conclusion so bleak.
The first most violent of the three poems is structured
around three significant moments we shared, the diner, the walk afterwards and
the final blood bath at the bar that concluded with her hanging on the roof of
her apartment building.
Each stanza goes from calm, rational conversation into a
sudden brutal outbreak of violence with me stabbing a butter knife into the
back of my own hand in the first, smashing my own face against cold brick in
the second and, shoving a wine glass into my own chest in the third and how
these impacted her, and my “Housing your bitch – I mean your friend four hours”
as to how badly she had hurt me until that friend is “gas lit and abandoned and
hanging from the roof top.”
I might argue how inaccurate and unfair these depictions
are, but the rage is real. So is the pain and ultimately her judgement stings
with a significant note of truth.
The second poem follows with the central idea of how wrong
she was about me, a cooler poem crafting a poem about not making assumptions about
me based on my writing – a back handed complement that admires my poetry while
at the same time declaring the poems are self-serving and do no reflect my real
character.
The third poem is resignation and withdrawal, saying more directly
in a gentler tone what the first few poems said in essence – that this thing
between us is over and I have pushed and pulled her to the point where she must
let it go.
Again, not completely fair or accurate since she came to
that conclusion day maybe weeks before I stepped into the bar. She simply
nailed the coffin shut using my head as her hammer.
If I didn’t feel so guilty, I might take gratification in
having been told to go fuck myself in such an amazing collection of poems by a
bitter, angry, wounded brilliant poet like her.
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