2002-01-29

Well, it's confirmed, apearantly "Sleep of the Just" truely sucked. Oh well, I can't say I was fond of all of it, but I at least thought there were some good parts. So what I'm going to do for you tonight, before I attempt to write the next poem (which is based on a dream I had last night), is stanza by stanza explain the poem. Mostly this is for my own justification for having spent four or five hours pounding out ideas and trying to get them all on paper.
So let's start with the first stanza. I really like this one. What it is referring to in saying that (Julius) Caesar didn't die is that after his death, like all the Roman emperors before the christianization of the Empire, he was deified. In other words he became a god in thier large pantheon, which was mostly made up of Greek gods re-named. In fact, even after the christianization of the official government of the Empiremany of the common people still worship the same way they always had (it wasn't until after the fall of Rome that the Catholics got anal about "heratics"). Thus Ceaser was still officially a god until the fall of Rome. Thus when the Empire that he created was destroyed, so was he. This fall (as most people know) was at the hands of the Hunn. This is only good timing on thier part because the leadership of Rome (thus the government itself) had already fallen to pieces. Thus the few lines.

The second stanza is not very good, but it is a truth. The fact is, however unpopular it may be to say such things right now, that the "American Dream", which is ultimately supposed to stand for both true freedom and the ability to better one's financial situation, is a lie. "It takes money to make money" is one of the truest sentiments ever expressed. In fact about 90% of all new buisnesses in America fail, because they cannot compete with the corperations and bigger buisnesses. Those few that do succeed usually do so at the cost of unethical behavior if not downright illegal. Let's face it without all the b.s., there is no room for the "American Dream" in America anymore. As far as "freedom" goes, that is only an illusion that we are fed to keep us happy. We are "free" with a ton of special conditions, not all of which are for the benefit of society. We are consantly bogged down by restrictive legislature, very little of which actually does anything to protect anyone. Does this mean I have un-American sentiments? No, just the opposite. I believe in the principles that we are told that America is supposed to represent, the idea of America as opposed to the reality of the government. As long as America stands for lies and double-standards (look at how hard we fight terrorism, yet Leonard Peltier still sits in jail...a victim of the terrorist actions of our very government), then I do not support this country into which I happened to be born. There are those who will try to counter me with stupid sayings like "freedom is not free" (or "has a price") and to those of you who think that...take a look at your own damn words, because they contradict themselves. Any way, enough with my bitter rantings. After all I am just one man, and my opinions might even be wrong (at least we can hope so).

Third Stanza: This is about my friend Heather, if she reads this diary...I'm sorry, but I hate seeing your talent wasting away in this cess-pool. Although from what I hear your fan-fiction is pretty damn good. I even got to read one of your stories, and I hope you make a fat lot of money off of them. I would still, however, like to see you on the screen (big or small, just never, ever do a porn, ok?). I like this stanza mainly because I reference a Greek persona who isn't a god, child of a god, or really a hero. Thespis just happens to be famous because he was the first performer in Greek theatre to ever have a line outside of the chorus, thus the first actor, and many say the patron of all actors, even though never any sort of deity or saint. Also this stanza is where the poem starts to become personal, and I don't believe a poem is ever a poem unless it contains personal views or revelations.

Fourth Stanza: Speaking of personal, now we head to the dreams of my own life. First of course is the fact I wanted to be a horror novelist, when I was young. In some ways I still want to write at least one, but I was unable to write anything that I was even remotely satisfied with. All of my ideas in retrospect, were quite trite and rather dull, b-movie material at best. So I left a lot of my stories unfinished, to be looked at later and possiby be salvaged, but many of the pages came up missing. No big loss though, what I did find was utter trash. Still, someday I'm going to write something that will actually scare the crap out of all of us, it just might be a poem rather then a story. I like a few of the lines in this stanza, but it needs to be trimmed down a bit probably.

Fifth stanza:Not very good at all, and quite self-explainitory, could be re-vamped to contain some actual content, but probably better left on the floor somewhere.

Sixth stanza:Actually I think this is a really good parapble about one dream killing another, and even though it was a bit over-exagerated it was still a tiny bit true. As far as the "Tilling dry and dead soil" part went, that simply means that I think I've sucked all of the imspiration I can out of both of these relationships and I'm tired of talking about them. I wanted to include this last psuedo-tale though.

Seventh and final stanza: I like this ending that sort of ties the stories (stanzas) together and re-enforces the theme of "losing dreams". I hate the fact that it took SEVEN STAZAS to get this far, but I wanted to get all of my ideas onto paper, and even now I have a few new personal memories that I could have made yet even more stanzas from...but I'm not going to.

Overall review of the poem:Too f'n long and wordy, needs to be seriously cut into before it could even be presentable at the Monday night reading, let alone Galileo. Now I've droned on way too long and need a cigarette. Don't worry though, you'll still get a poem, it'll just be an entry that I'll write in a few minutes seperately.

~Matt Magus

0 comments so far

<<< | >>> | Random