Illogic

It looks to me like the author has made some major sacrifices to the text's diction, meaning, voice, imagery, and grammar for no other reason than to shoehorn in some rhymes. I think that's sad. Let's take a walk through this poem:

I look within, and find it's infinitely dense
Beyond it, with this momentary lens.

Literal meaning: indistinct. The "it" here is denotatively confusing. Beyond "it"? You find "it" is dense? What is "it"? "Momentary lens" is a nice turn off phrase, but indistinct in meaning. My best guess is the author is trying to say something about the speaker's inability to see farther than his mortal constraints allow.

I inhale, as I descend

Literal meaning: The speaker breathes, and moves downward. This is not useful or imaginative imagery. The speaker is breathing. So what? How is the speaker descending? In what context? Going down stairs? In an airplane? An escalator?

Neurochemical miswire, fuck every moment's desire

Literal meaning: mental illness of some sort...uh...exists? ...I guess? The speaker isn't speaking in complete sentences here. "Fuck every moment's desire" is also strange. The speaker issues a command to the reader to have intercourse with their own urges. This literally makes no sense.

In addition, why is this rhyme-pair the only one not arranged in a couplet? It seems odd.

Lastly, I don't understand the inconsistent tone here. "Fuck" is such a harsh, course, basic word. And "neurochemical" is so jargonny and medical. The two words don't seem to exist in the same universe.

I let the devil heal the manic
Nothing but ashes to heal, relatively tragic

Literal meaning

The speaker allows Satan to heal another character, called "the maniac". I have no idea how, or why. For some reason "the maniac" is reduced to ashes though. So did the devil heal him, or not? And why is it "relatively" tragic and not just tragic? Relative to what? None of this is making sense.

Time relapses, while the universe
expands then collapses

Literal meaning: The frame of reference here now suddenly expands wildly to talk about the flow of time itself, for some reason. We are told it "relapses", or goes back to the way it was before. But when were we told it had changed in the first place? And what's with the universe? Is this imagery connected to anything we were told about before? What does the universe expanding have to do with Satan healing (or not healing?) "The Manic"? None of this makes sense.

I'm a singularity
Combusting momentarily

Literal meaning: The speaker is, or shares some descriptive elements with, a black hole. Which will soon be on fire. Because...reasons.

Spiritually avoiding this hypothetical
What even is an intellectual?

Literal meaning: The speaker is trying to avoid answering the following question: "What is a smart person".

I need some higher ground
Lookin within, then sin

The speaker wants to move higher up. At least we have some consistency in narrative here. Earlier, the speaker "inhaled as he descended", and now he needs to get to high ground. I still do not see the context or impact of that imagery though. And the second line is absolute verbal nonsense. "Lookin within, then sin" makes exactly as much sense as "skipping around, then jump". The verb tenses don't match. One is a gerund infinitive without a subject, the other is an present tense imperative command. This literally makes no sense.

Devote existence to the utilitarian
Relapse so fast
Forget even quicker

Literal meaning: The speaker wants the reader to give the essence of themselves to a personified essence of pragmatism. And the go back to whatever they were before that, quickly. And forget things.


I'm literally baffled. This poem is half-baked nonsense that looks like it's saying something, but manages to say nothing at all, for 16 lines. 16 uneven, weirdly rhymed, badly metered, unrhythmic, unharmonious lines.

This didn't work for me, on nearly every level.

/r/OCPoetry Thread