The gatekeepers
According to the gatekeepers, the only way
To barricade political defiance
Is build stronger planks of monetary compliance
***
Willst thou trespass onto forbidden territory
Or be sheltered contentedly with ancient scrolls
Is growth of civilisation really mandatory?
The gatekeepers seem desperate to get it enforced
***
Mother Nature is beginning to waver
The Arrogant declare, trapped in their fence
A pattern of reason, forevermore
***
Aliens
Fear echoes a myriad of outrageousness
Constellations guilt-ridden, trodden, self-absorbed
Contemplated with aliens, who fight with aliens
Galactic civil wars; chaos has been assassinated
***
Terra may be next-
put her to the test.
***
The Futile Eternity of the Constellations
How amusing, to hear the roars,
Of silence; consultations from those foolish
Constellations. A comet hears the poignant melodies
Of a Lied. Succinctly enveloping the cosmos of gluttony
Amidst the stars, there are atoms,
Of mutiny. Delivering the doctrine, faster
than the speed of light;
“Oh no, this is the worst the universe has ever been”
***
Orcus laughs. Nature adores spheres,
after all, where else does eternity lie?
***
Sighs the constellations;
oh, how they wished to die
***
Il du Diable
So convinced; the doctrine of polarisation
is the absolute, inevitable Truth
Though amidst the North and South Poles
There is an equator, the physical equilibrium
For those that tire from metaphorical limbo
in the crevice,
Of il du Diable.
***
Alas! Where can ye be found?
Upon the heath, where the sane
Cower in horror, and the kooks dine with grace
In the crevice,
Of il du Diable!
***
Beware; for even the famed depictions
Of Middletown
Will cease to flourish like Motown
And instead, produce a harmony
So disjunct, it surpasses the element of mad blasphemy
Why must all tunes become so obsolete?
The answer surely lies,
In the crevice,
Of il du Diable...
***
The Shadows
The Underground is a fearful place
Or Plato’s crooked cave
Where all the remains of Imagination were
Ruthlessly tossed aside
***
Yet the worst must surely be the Shadows.
Wherein by the vicious Parties
Shall break free from their shackles of meaning
The poets live in the Undead's Gardens
Where the serpents declare,
“Trochaic tetrameter! I dub thee, the New Language”
Emulating the holiness of the witches’ cackle
***
And the very most dire aspect
Is the scrutiny of the Shadows as they inspect
***
and shroud the minds of poets and dreamers
With their bewakouff, vivid streamers
Emblazoning with cult-like messages
And depthless contemporaries
***
The Soul hath Perished
The hamster’s grave lies nearby the
Simulated trees; moss and Apathy
Shroud its true name
***
2042
Nineteen eighty-four arrived long ago
Now await Beauty’s wrath;
Of 2042
***
That is, if time chooses to maintain a superfluous etiquette
Despite the Parties’ derogatory epithet
I shall say nothing else, but allow me to present
***
My timeless arrogance, built squarely
From pillars of ignorance
I require not thy condolences
Nor your invaluable scriptures of reverence
***
Instead, accept these acts of insolence
Which lack any form of benevolence
Selling all I claim to possess
Means nothing to the Shadow’s prowess
***
Hung up in the gallery of control
Thou shalt not fall under pretence
And indicate you never foretold this disgrace
***
For eventually thou shalt notice thy self-inflicted fate
But by then, the light will hath arrived too late
***
The Accidental Fiasco
The ramblings of a Marx; cigarettes
which were the opium of his delusional ideologies
But alas, blamed it all on religion
As though its potency outweighed that of his chronic epiphanies
Though the masses were all clearly tipsy
***
How, precisely, that was the question
Even so, a few decided to attend this maestro’s lectures
And declared he really was not merely talking nonsense
***
And then there was the communist manifesto
I wonder why, it was such a fiasco
***
Back to Square One
For the masses of course, religion binds them
Though if thou hadst an issue, then simply do not believe
In the harmonious though rigid codes of conduct
Prevalent long ago
***
Though one may emulate Shakespeare’s sonnets
Not all trembled or suffered from those
Totalitarian, yet collective ghosts
Which hath dictated thy society as religious “Leaders” chose
***
Why then, is your solution
To purge them with consultations
You claim this is for Democracy
The holy rite
Though never in sight.
And liberalism; 'watered down Shamanism'?
***
Yet the left has morphed unto the right
And the right associated with the unthinkables
Is thy brain not crammed tight
Sealed with carbon-free plastic
***
But the footprints of Shadows are arriving
Naturally, no one needs to learn driving
Even if all sense is dying
***
AI
AI is a cherished nightmare
Surpassing even the Shadows' cares
***
Can it reproduce those sweet antipathies?
“Of course, it can; already can it manipulate ethereal
artworks and enriching paintings”
***
And what of bitter complaints?
Nonsense! Its Perfection puts even the Nobles to shame
***
Refusal to acknowledge the dreaded nonsensical.
***
To lose one’s only Friend
Goodbye negativity, goodbye hardships, goodbye
My dear friend, Meaning
We may miss your untimely presence
That is, if we ever appreciate
Your epistemic distance
The source for all our fallible curiosities’
***
Now we are even further away
One day, we will need you again
For we are bound to go astray...
***
The only Truth that remains
What else do we behold
Save our antipathical abodes
Too disorientating, and therefore wondrous
***
I ask you; what is the difference
Between opaqueness and translucence
The Shadows ne’er revealed its mystical nature
***
And now only they reside,
Gleefully celebrating with Prime,
In the crevice,
of il du Diable.
***
Yet still, a poignant sigh is heard
Whispering silently; “Why is New...”
Sings the lark, submerged in the blues
***
The entails remain.
Orcus is dead.
***
Hi there, Lim here with a review.
General Impressions
I definitely got a strong sense of doom from this poem. The tone of each part is largely ominous, with a few bits of mockery thrown in here and there. I thought the ominous tone was probably most effective in the Aliens poem. The way you used the short length and stanza breaks there created some shock value for me in the end of the poem. All the poems are clearly interconnected and I appreciate that the last one contains callbacks and echoes of several of the previous poems.
There’s also the sense that some lines are vaguely gesturing towards contemporary events such as the development of artificial intelligence and VR but they don’t make specific comments about specific situations. One exception would be Il du Diable which to me seems to pinpoint the Dreyfus Affair specifically.
Some of the overarching themes I could identify seem to be:
1. Downfall: it seems implied in ‘The gatekeepers’, ‘Back to Square One’ and ‘To lose one’s only Friend’ that there is some kind of irreversible Bad Thing tm that has happened. None of the poems imply any uptick from that, so I’m pretty confident saying this is one of the themes of this collection.
2. Loss of Meaning: the poems either explicitly describe meaning as having been lost by the world or they describe an equivalent loss such as in ‘The Soul hath Perished’ where it is the value of life that has been lost. (I’m not sure if ‘meaning’ in this poem refers always to sense or if it sometimes refers to a broader cultural notion of ‘the meaning of life’.) The references to ‘society gone mad’ in Il du Diable and The Shadows could also fit this category.
Concept
Something I like about these poems is where you put a twist on the meanings of classical allusions. For instance, the shadows in Plato’s allegory of the cave were originally meant to represent the work of poets. (Plato believed poetry had the potential to distort reality.) Here though, you’ve changed it such that the shadows are an external bogeyman that interferes with the poets’ otherwise fine work, so it becomes an allegory in favour of imagination rather than against. That made the poem more interesting.
Similarly, I liked the metaphor “My timeless arrogance, built squarely / From pillars of ignorance” in 2042. ‘arrogance’ is usually depicted as negative, but here it is described as a form of strength. That’s certainly eye-catching, and the comparison to a concrete thing such as a building helps make it more vivid as well.
Technique
I think you could work to make your criticisms more persuasive. While critique of society in poems doesn’t have to be like an essay, I found it hard to believe the criticisms being made here because they were often just assertions or lines that assumed the reader already thinks something is wrong with what they are describing. For example:
The ramblings of a Marx; cigarettes
which were the opium of his delusional ideologies
But alas, blamed it all on religion
As though its potency outweighed that of his chronic epiphanies
Though the masses were all clearly tipsy
AI is a cherished nightmare
Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell
121,211 Literary Works • 653,941 Reviews
Points: 27
Reviews: 52
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