The Self-Tormentor

 Modo liceat viver, est spes 

In the quiet house: voices hush.

No one speaks of the thankless sun’s

flight to sunnier climes. The shuffling feet 

floating through the draped daze of rooms 

fearful of disturbing the dust, waking 

the beast behind the shuttered doors, 

pad the halls like silhouettes 

scraped from the walls of lighter times. 

Down a lane the night sweeps autumn’s 

welling ache of leaves taking leave 

of the mother tree, setting off 

for kinder season. The stray hound’s 

haggard bark, a wolf’s whistle to maiden 

Moon’s tease, terpsichore of veils, 

echoes through the dark swash of clouds 

banking over a summer’s tindered regrets. 

Still, awoke, stirring thoughts slip the leash 

to traipse the sleepy hollow, days 

doffed to youth, to song of hungry chords 

insistent refrain of self being played 

over and over again. The loop 

of a brain’s pan frying Bacon’s 

shank to sensory experience 

a star-fed cluster to why who what I am. 

Falling asleep, to waiting dreams 

I hold to the illusion …  

While there’s life, there’s hope. 

Ken e Bujold

Reviews

[1809 Black Plague Decem..]

Hellos, Ken e Bujold, I love the poem,
the description is not monotonous but it details a quiet, moment
of stillness, love tha
t,
the last stanza is good, but the poem holds more truce and fortification.
----Mayanrd

[fallon]

that last line rings in my ears..... "while there's life there's hope". The recognition that even at the end, even just before that long sleep, there is still hope. That is beautiful.
You use such unique words. It really helps with the imagery.
I enjoyed reading!

[Ken e Bujold]

thanks for stopping by Fallon. glad you found something to your liking

ken

[John the Baptist]

The impression here is of one who is acutely aware of the passage of time and is disturbed by it. The references to summer and sunnier climes have to do with a departed youth and what now remains. The speaker hasn't totally given up, though. The last line testifies to that.

[Ken e Bujold]

certainly have give up! And yes time hangs over this one, and all that conjures up.

thanks John

[light and ashes]

Depression is a self tormenting disease and...maybe a self important one as well, as was stated to me by a very dear friend, when we were speaking of it.
This is what this write reminds me of.
It reminds me of the years I went through intense isolation,
and what they were like,
how they were wrought with depression and torment.

It's like being in a house while no one is home, except there is someone home.. It's you. It's like living in a shell without a soul.
You can barely feel your own soul under the weight....

and your conclusion is exactly what I told myself, as I was moving through the steps to get out of depression..
however unclear they were at the time.

[Ken e Bujold]

thanks for the review LA. sorry for delay in responding, but on vacation at the moment, and time does have a habit of slipping away.
glad you found a connection in the poem. Depression is without question one of the most debilitating inflictions, a silent killer if there ever was one.

ken

[light and ashes]

It is, indeed,
you're welcome.

[Anne Martin]

I like this. It took me a while to get past the long sentences and line breaks that didn't really follow what I would ordinarily consider logic, separating a possessive from its noun for example. It's not necessarily a criticism, but it meant that I needed to avoid the urge to pause at a line break, or at least stop to consider whether that line break was meaningful, as it often is in my poetry. (I often use line breaks to hide an elision.) That said, the imagery was vivid, and the alliteration pleasing. Well done.

[Robert Trakofler]

A wonderful meld of imagery and emotion (Your Bacon reference sent me down a spiral contemplating inductive reasoning) I say this because poetry is such a nuanced and personal thing, it is... what the reflection of its observer is! I imagine that sort of thing would put dear Francis into a frenzy despite his love of the scientific method he was also a keen lover of poetry I wonder how those two things melded in his mind? I am grappling with your closing and beginning lines a great deal these days so this write echoed in my mind especially fine to the point I have been telling myself I should go on about the business of being alive and shake the remnants of death from my heart and head (this is not an easy task by the way) But I must close by saying this was a fine write! I enjoyed the intelectual stimulation

[Ken e Bujold]

Thank you, Robert, for your very kind and thoughtful review. Moving on from the gloom of grief, and dark thoughts is indeed never easy. Especially as we begin to accumulate so much of it.
This poem is the happy convergence of my recent wanderings through my shelves. The title and Latin monogram are from the Roman playwright Publius Terentius Afer via Baudelaire's poem L'Heautontimoroumenos. The poem's opening line was inspired by a reading of one of my favorite unsung heroes Siegfried Sassoon.
The poem works on hope on different levels for different reasons. At its core it is a reflection time, but how one views the passage is of course always dependent on where along life's continuum you are.

ken

[W. Barrett Munn]

Delightful creation mix of seriousness and playfulness-I wonder if Francis would need to taste the brain pan fried Bacon in order to form a hypothesis.

I also wonder if he dreamed.

Winston

[Ken e Bujold]

Bacon is one of those magical people in history. The source of so much of what we now take to be our everyday understanding of senses and our place in the universe. And then in addition, a mad poet's clay to play with so many wonderful images