Problems
a lament of sorts
As promised, I am abandoning chronological order and presenting you here with a work that is quite recent, hoping to dispel any impression that my style or technique has in any way improved over time. This terrible piece is a testament to the eternal constancy of disappointment, which I suppose is at least a bit reassuring in the face of an ever changing world.
Problems
you will not claim our love, my dear
you will not speak it
you won’t concede in word writ large,
nor tender speech in private
no utterance,
no admission,
and though I hang on every word
that issues from your lips
the status quo remains the same:
a line of demarcation
if you could live the wounds I bear,
you would not be so fickle.
you would not shift like changing wind,
turning at a moment’s breath
you would not balk at time’s uncertain course,
and the endless surprise of consequence
but you do
and I do as I can.
I wrote this one on the tram, tipsy and sleep deprived. It was not meant to be read,as I felt it was rather unfair in its accusation. Our emotions, though, operate in a sphere apart from justice, indeed you might say that they are the root origin of injustice.
While we might rationally embrace logic, and thus consistency, it is in the heart (or whatever you might call it) that we can cleave to a sort of wicked duality. Hypocrisy is the lifeblood of the ego, of the actualisation of desire, and with it comes a necessary drive to simplify things in terms that are immune to the confusing influence of nuance.
When it comes to an injured pride, to a foiled yearning, to the barest suggestion that the object of one’s desire might be out of reach, the inevitable reaction is to reject all complication or compromise. We become oppressed protagonists in a dreadful pantomime, where the good and the bad are blatantly cast.
Such a pantomime did I find myself enacting on that dreary September morning, having arrived at what seemed like the certain close of something that had been so promising. I had become far too invested in possibility, oblivious to the glaring indications to the contrary. That her indecision should come as a sudden surprise to me was largely my own doing.
It is strange how the situations in which we are most invested are the ones in which we can act with the most volatility. Or, at least, that’s how I would put it. If pressed, she would say with a dismissive shrug that she just doesn’t care that much.
It is this volatility that the poem reflects. A hurried scrawling, a deliberate abandonment of punctuation, a return even to an earlier style of raw un-capitalised word. It echoes my endless preoccupation with Yeats, my brief failed dabbling in slam-poetry (WHICH WE WILL NEVER DISCUSS EVER AGAIN.) It’s a shambles to reflect its author, a willed indulgence in suspended belief.
The poem begs a question that has some very complicated and altogether unexciting answers, none of which have the fixity or flair to lend themselves to drama. It must therefore suppose otherwise. There must be some one thing, some one reason, some one insurmountable and thus pivotal flaw in an otherwise perfect image of possibility.
Who cares if “changing wind” is probably the most exhausted image for a heart’s fickle favours? I’m going to do it anyways because I can, because that’s how I feel, and because I may be feeling the effects of that poor choice of breakfast beverage.
It is difficult to find yourself sounding like a cliche when part of you genuinely feels like you have crafted the best words to express how you feel. When you start to feel like something everyone else has already said too much about, there is a natural snobbish knee-jerk of dismay, for heavens forbid that we should be so unlucky as to hazard something so utterly common as love.
Over time I have grown quite comfortable with this. I don’t think there is an ordained opposition of meaning and frequency. I think that we are so accustomed to valuing the things of this world for their scarcity that we expect a rarity from that which is ultimately infinite.
Speaking from the middle, or maybe even still the beginning, instead of from the aftermath, is a bit of a new angle for me. I’d rather err on the side of saying too little rather than saying too much.
“I do as I can.” And I did as I could, and of course everything more or less worked out.
Suffice it to say that of all of my horrid excuses for poetry, all of these botched and bungled little verses, this one holds a place particularly dear to me. I almost wish it wasn’t as bad as it is. Almost.
