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The poem in question: my pathetic attempt

Originally titled, “my pathetic attempt to tell you how much,” This is one of those silly poems that you write for a girl.  You know that kind?  Yeah.

The poem is dated 11/3/97, but I’m pretty sure the original pre-dates that by a few months.  I do have the original text, which I’ll post below.

The girl I was dating at the time (the second one from A Lesson To Be Learned) used to tell me that I had a way with words, and I would joke, “Yeah, maybe sideways,” and thus the first stanza.

The first part of third stanza is an obvious homage to (read: blatant ripoff of?) “Closer to Free” by the BoDeans.

Ultimately, this is just a sappy love poem that I’m sure I meant with all my heart when I wrote it.  After breaking up with this girl I made a resolution that I wouldn’t write any more stupid love poems for girls.  Of course I broke it with the next girl that dated.

The original, even more sappy, version is reprinted below.  It has a few extra lines, and a few changed lines.  I like the “official” version better.

my pathetic attempt to tell you how much

a way with words?
don’t I wish
yeah, maybe sideways
whatever works, I guess

love knows no bounds
I love you
is that enough?
so much to say
such a miniscule vocabulary

everybody wants respect
you’ve got mine
everybody needs a chance
as many as you need
they’re yours
ask and ye shall receive

love
who needs it?
hope you do
cause you’ve got mine

wish sideways was good enough
maybe it will be
just this once

Actually, reading over the two versions again, the differences in the third and fourth stanzas change the tone of the poem.  Interesting.

The poem in question: disillusion

This is an interesting poem to me, and I may have a tough time explaining it, so I’ll just do what I can, I suppose.

It’s not based on any personal experience or any particular events or circumstances that I can think of.  It’s more of an “idea poem,” if you will.  If you won’t, that’s fine, too.

The basic message I was going for is that people need to work together regardless of their differences to accomplish good things.  When people decide to do things on their own and ignore the help of others (or don’t offer their own help to others), maybe good things can still happen, but certainly not at the same level.  I don’t know if that’s what got through, but now it’s been established.

As the poem begins, different people are facing a common enemy, but they don’t realize they need to work together to defeat it.  Everyone is doing his own thing, and nothing effective is being done to stop the advance of the enemy.  Later on, the people start to get scared–hysterical, even–and it looks like they might not be able to win this fight, but still they refuse to work together.

By the time they realize that they have to work together, it’s too late.  The enemy has won and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it now.

Interstitched in the narrative stanzas is a description of the enemy.  It seems like a bunch of nonsense; really just words that I liked that rhymed and sounded nice together.  But the point of these descriptive stanzas is to establish that Disillusion is just a regular guy, metaphorically.  He’s not some crazily powerful, unbeatable enemy, though he is a crafty one.  The lines

disillusion exists only in the eyes of the beholder

and

we talked
I was shocked

are meant to convey this, albeit ambiguously.  The problem, as previously stated, is the that people wouldn’t work together, and Disillusion was able to use that to his advantage, up until the point where he won.  The writing style in these second and fourth stanzas seems somewhat corny, but I liked it then (and used the same approach at least one time in a future poem), and I still like it now.

So what is Disillusion, or what does it represent?  To me, it’s what happens when your focus is on the wrong things.  You try so hard to do something, but (unaware or not) you are going about it the wrong way, and so it never gets accomplished.  Eventually you conclude that it can’t be done, or that your time was wasted, or whatever else, and you give up on it.  There are few things sadder than being disillusioned of a truly good and noble thing.

I’m not sure that I’ve adequately commented on this poem, or that what commentary I have offered makes any amount of sense.  But I’ve done what I can, and that’s enough for me.

The poem in question: A Lesson To Be Learned

This poem is semi-autobiographical.  I say “semi” because the end hasn’t come true yet, and I suspect that perhaps it will not completely.  Oh, now isn’t that mysterious?

I wrote the above paragraph just under 11 months ago, when I originally began this poetism commentary.  Looking back, this is not a poem I am particularly proud of.  The meter is a mess, the narrative is all over the place, and it’s just kind of painful to read.  On the plus side, it contains the word “moreso,” which both my friend Ben and the dictionary claim is not a real word, whilst I claim they are kings of the sillypants.

When I was a junior in high school, one of my LDS Seminary teachers once showed us an “epic,” i.e. longish, poem he had written when he had been close to our age.  It was about some troubles he had earlier on and how lost he had been and eventually found his way back to a better place.  I don’t remember the details of it, but I do remember that I liked it, and I suppose that A Lesson To Be Learned was my attempt at something similar.  Without being able to compare it directly with my teacher’s, I suspect his was the better of the two.

The voices the boy hears in my poem represent the call of the devil and his angels.  The line

“We will not harm you, not at all,”

Reminds me of 2 Nephi 28:21, where it is noted that “the devil… leadeth them away carefully down to hell.”  We can see this all around in our society; “just a little bit won’t hurt” is the norm, and increasingly often it’s “a lot bit won’t hurt either, because it’s not really that bad at all.”  Well, eventually the boy gives in, and we arrive at my favorite lines:

As he spoke the words they crowed with joy
And then dragged him away.
“One less person we must strive,”
They said, “to take and slay.”

To my imaginings, crowing with joy is an accurate description of their reaction to ensnaring a new person, especially one so young.  If they can get you while you’re young and keep you, they’ll have your whole life to help them drag other people away.

So now captured, the boy realizes he was stupid, but finds it seemingly impossible to get out.  He tries a few times but can’t seem to find the right road.  He keeps making the same mistakes and winds up right back where he started, so he decides to give up.

But lo!  Someone realizes this kid is stuck and needs some help to get out.  However, he’s grown so accustomed to being stuck where he is that he lets some of the voices follow along with him, and eventually winds up right back where he was, with even less hope than he had before.  Someone else helps him out, and this time he leaves the voices behind, recommits firmly himself to righteous living, and everything is happy and flowery forevermore.

I wrote this poem about two months after graduating from high school, after I had started dating a girl that I met at work.  She and a girl I dated in high school (referenced in Insincerity) are the two rescuers, and since I was young and dumb (rather, younger and dumber) I of course thought that the girl I was dating then was The One, and the happy floweriness would be with her forever.

Well, probably we could have ended up together, but ultimately we didn’t, and it was for the best.  Who I did end up with is the best match for me that I can imagine.

Well, 11 months later, the end still has not come true, and I still suspect that perhaps it will not completely.  My strife is not ended, and though I have learned my lessons, I need continual reminding.

A few notes on variation:

The line “And then dragged him away” also exists as “And dragged him away.”

The line “He’s yet to feel real pain” also exists as “He’s yet to see real pain.”

At one point I apparently succumbed to the pressures of friend and dictionary, as “Moreso than he had earned” also exists as “More than he had earned.”

(“But lo!”?  Really?  Sheesh.)

The poem in question: The Danger In Dreams

There are two things that I remember about this poem:

• The middle stanza was the first part that I wrote. Who doesn’t like festering shadows?
• The girl I had a crush on my senior year of high school told me she liked it. That’s always nice.

I’ve had some weird dreams in my life, a few of which have stayed with me for a long time. I had a dream about ten years ago involving a girl I had dated “giving” me away, for lack of a better word, to another girl named Heather. I have since always been quite wary of girls named Heather.

Recently I have had some dreams about my parents and their divorce. In one of the dreams I was talking to one of them, telling about another dream which I had had a few nights before. Why do I dream about another dream I had?

Dreams are wacky.

Anyway, I like this poem, though the meter is rough. I don’t have anything deep or profound to say about it; everything seems to be spelled out pretty plainly in the poem itself. Um. That’s about it.

The poem in question: Inner Betrayal

Ah, the final poem of 1996. I want to like this poem. I really do. This is a very personal poem to me, but I just feel that it is horribly written. The meter is all wrong, the rhyming is okay but feels forced, and the ideas just don’t flow together very well. In looking over my various copies of this poem, I find up to four different versions of parts of it. This seems to me to emphasize how much I struggled to make this poem work, but it doesn’t seem to have ever come together as I had hoped.

But all is not lost! It was not too long after I first tried a Poetism Redux that I made an attempt on Inner Betrayal, which I will share at the end of this entry. Apparently I still had such strong feelings for how important this poem is and how it needed improvement that I went to it almost straightaway after my first Redux (well, as straightaway as eight days can be considered).

As far as the poem itself goes, the story is straightforward and easy to follow, though by my reading, the final few lines seem to be a bit disconnected from the rest. (And I’m the one who wrote it and knows what I was talking about.)

This poem is about someone who is hiding a secret that he is ashamed of. He knows that he’s done something wrong, but he doesn’t want to admit it, not because of fear of punishment, but because of the shame and embarrassment. I suppose in that light, “unspeakable” may be the wrong word to describe the ill he performed. In any case, he doesn’t want anyone to know.

Then

emotion intervened and made guilt persevere

and he realized he had to get this weight off his chest. There was no alternative if he wanted to feel like he could truly be acceptable to other people. So he started the long, difficult task of repentance and restitution. He struggled long and hard, sometimes wondering if his efforts would all be worth it. After a while he thought he was doing well enough, and instead of keeping up the fight, eased off a bit, and oops! Suddenly he was right back down where he was before; maybe he was even lower.

Not quite understanding how he had fallen so easily, and embarrassed that he had fallen, he decided not to make as valiant an attempt to recover a second time. He essayed a devil-may-care exterior to hide his chagrin, and eventually discovered that by pretending all was well and nothing needed fixing–while continuing his aberrant behavior–he was removing himself further and further from help and recovery. It would not be impossible, should he try again, but it would certainly be much, much harder the longer he let it go.

It is somewhat ironic is that I can clearly remember the real-life details that inspired this poem, but I cannot bring myself to describe them more clearly than I have in this commentary.

Now I’d like to point out the differences in the various copies of the poem I have lying about. To make it easier to follow, I’ll note the differences as compared to the version published on this site by referencing stanzas and line numbers, e.g. (2-5) represents stanza 2, line 5.

Handwritten copy

(1-3) He kept it unrevealed for a year or two
Till it nearly mastered all his will.

(2-6) And was troubled no more for a time.

(3-3) For a long time he hid behind his mask

(3-7) He’d forgotten how to respond to care
While trying to rationalize self-wrought pain.

Electronic copy 1

(1-4) Until it nearly mastered all his will.

(2-3) He oft thought it wasn’t worth the effort to return;
The process seemed of interminable length.
Then he thought he mastered the cause of the ill
And troubled no more with it for a time,

(3-1) For a while thereafter he was puzzled and confused,
But he placed confusion behind insincerity.
For a long time he hid behind his mask

(3-5) He remembered things that had caused so much grief
And then a thought of horror entered into his brain:
He’d forgotten how to respond to those who cared for him
While trying to rationalize his self-wrought pain.

Electronic copy 2

(1-7) When emotion intervened and made guilt seem so strong
That he felt no one could do anything worse.

(2-2) And took very nearly every ounce of the man’s strength.
He often thought it wasn’t worth the effort to return;
The process seemed of interminable length.
Then he thought he mastered the cause of the ill,
And troubled no more with it for a time,
But letting down his guard proved somewhat fatal,
And he fell down the other side of the arduous climb.

For a while thereafter he was puzzled and confused,
But he placed confusion behind insincerity.
For a period of months he hid behind his mask,
‘Til a vision of the past hit with startling clarity.
He remembered bits and pieces that had caused so much grief
And then a thought of horror entered into his brain:
He’d forgotten how to respond to those who cared for him
In his effort to rationalize his self-wrought pain.

It’s interesting to see that more than two-thirds of the lines of Electronic Copy 2 contain (sometimes quite) different wording, as do just under half the lines of Electronic Copy 1. The handwritten copy is the most similar, with less than one-third of the lines differing.

The difference prize, however, goes to “Inner Betrayal Redux,” which I shall now unveil for your reading pleasure. It’s dated October 10, 2006–almost 10 years after the original (whichever of the four versions is the original, anyway).

I knew a man upon a time, not too long ago,
Who hid within himself his crimes and ills.
He kept them secret, unrevealed, as long as he could go,
And sometimes tries to keep them, still.
He tried to keep the pain away that feasted on his soul
While feeling every moment he might burst,
But emotion intervened and guilt swooped down to kill
And he felt that no one else could have it worse.

He made his restitution, best as he knew how;
It took him nearly every ounce of strength.
He often thought he should give up, unworthy to return,
And the process seemed to be of endless length.
A time passed, and he thought he was now master,
And was troubled no longer–for a while.
He avoided constant vigilance
And fell back down his arduous climb.

He now was only puzzled and confused,
But clothed himself in insincerity.
Again he hid behind his mask
Until vision came with startling clarity.
Suddenly, things that caused him so much grief became so clear,
And a new nightmare came into his brain:
He could no longer respond to others’ care
Because he sought to justify his self-wrought pain.

I think “Redux” starts out strong, and begins to stumble on the meter in the second half. Some of the rhyming is still a bit forced. However, overall, I think it is a great improvement over the original (any of them) and I think I can finally say that I am nearly satisfied with this poem.