A Devil Clothed In Fear

I am I,
who can know what is in my mind,
who can know my side.
To describe my inside,
would take a lifetime to inscribe.


Put that aside,
I only have a short time,
to say whats happening behind.
These walls are so closed,
the small opening soon to die.


It's dark dangerous and alone,
within fear and love reside.
Outside's a wild fight,
two supernatural forces,
in the form of directional voices,


battle each other for eternal control,
one's victory is the others downfall.
The triumphant one celebrates,
Its interests it can only manifest
in one of the inhabitants --


mentioned above.
This time it doesn't pick love.
It conquers and decrees,
Seducing the vices and condemning
the heavenly soul it has you believe.


The war exceeds.
Breaking battering,
slamming and shattering.
The body begins to bleed.
Defeat it feeds.


Dragging the immortal
in gore and waste,
Painful is the disgrace.
Twisting in the shank.
Imprisons and excommunicates.  


Bolts close the door,
seals the light through the floor.
Flight to freedom's now obscure.
Poof, all hopes out like a candle on a windy shore.
So are the feelings of any cure.


The sullen darkness ensues,
all beauty's consumed.
Proof it's no ruse.
It wants you to fight,
nay pleads, to harness your might.


Screams of anger
remorse and plea,
Hold no strength
against this sequenced disease.
Anguish will seemingly never cede.


How can one defeat an enemy
clothed in a primal energy in the identity?


One cannot fight one in scum 
and keep themselves clean from mud.
To capture an outside monster
in an innate emotion of character.
The "I" can never be an ouster. 


An answer inherently conceived,
for a rebel to king another's esteem,
the inside must believe,
they've lost and the others won,
subsequently giving in the keys.


To quench the thirst of the beast
in its dire quest to reign supreme,
laughter is the gun.
When you don't succumb,
Glory is achieved.


The smile will spear,
that triumph nor despair,
shall be dominated by a devil clothed in fear.
Faith now visible from the smear,
the hand of self-sustaining life finally clear,


with a fist showing
that it will indeed be there,
to crush the black air,
quelling the curse of the coward,
who's now petrified and scared.

Laugh to declare, 
a prayer above to his ear.
A battle's won but war's here.
Bring an angel clothed in love
who's superior soon and near. 

© Max Franklin. All rights reserved

Reviews

[Emma Olsen]

I love the musicality of your verse, but I'm wondering if this is a bit too general? Your description is grounding me a bit more than your opening verses, but I'd rather be getting that from the actual poem. I'm not quite sure of the setting, or who the main character is or what their relationship is to the devil and angel waging a battle outside. (Also, who are 'they?' What battle exactly is being fought? For what?) This is too ethereal right now, so I'm having a hard time pinning down exactly what fight's going on and what stake the 'I' has in this battle. Consequently, I'm having a really hard time reading this and understanding it because it feels like I have to do a lot of work decoding it. A little work is great, but too much and you alienate your reader. It's fine to include a lot to analyze, but you should also make sure that the poem stands some without deep analysis. It seems, right now, like you're stuffing a lot of broad concepts (love, angels and demons, battles, rebellion, imprisonment, primal savagery, etc.) into one poem. Trim back - what's absolutely essential for me to get your message? The idea of imprisonment seems vital. I'd focus your metaphors on that.
You have some great images near the end of the poem, but I think you need to include more like them in the beginning. I think it'll help with the floaty confusion in the beginning. I think what would help this most is clarification and simplification. =)
A few additional, random questions to ponder:
Are you trying to abide by a rhyming scheme or not? A general format might help unify this all a little bit.
Your description: "A devil wins a battle over an angel. To make a person do its bidding it has to use either fear or love." The devil has to use fear or love? It sounded as though the angel represented love and the demon fear and they were battling it out? (I feel like I keep going to the description for clarification but I'm not sure how much time you spent on it. Sorry!)

Anyways, I'm very long-winded. tl;dr I do think this has a nice tone to it and I loved your opening kinda tongue-twister, but I think you need a bit more context, clarity, and focus on the specific. =)

[Max Franklin]

Thank you for your comment.

I apologize for the description it only confused you, I have since removed it.

The format is precise, no punctuation for no pause, commas for a short pause, dashes for a continuation and periods for for a long pause. I will look into editing the punctuation better.

I have written a little note instead of the description to explain the piece and will soon write a further explanation.

I will also look at the piece again with your critique as one can never edit or clarify a piece enough. This piece is on a very intricate and difficult spiritual and physical topic. Each line is deep there is nothing I can do about that :)

Again thank you for your very well taken constructive criticism and hope you can help me again.

Cheers!

[Emma Olsen]

Just to be clear, I have no issue with the format or punctuation. I was talking all in the sense of tone, story, and word choice. I'm not sure where you're getting the punctuation stuff from?
Listen, I have to be honest here, if you're writing this for yourself and it's confusing, that's fine, but you put it on this site so I'm assuming you're looking for some type of readership and, if that's the case, making your poem too dense is a bad idea. I really think you need to edit for clarity. I shouldn't need to read your explanation of the poem to understand and decode it. I understand what you're going for by reading the explanation, but very little of it was actually communicated to me when I read through it before. Even if you're going for something deeper, make sure you can communicate some kind of story on the surface level. As I said, I do appreciate the lyrical quality of this, but I had to read this a few times to try to understand and I'm not sure I got it even then. I think you have a way with words, but I've seen a lot of people make the mistake (including myself) of getting too wrapped up in the idea of a poem that must be decoded but that relies on a completely personal line of symbolism and meaning that, because of its personal connection, becomes completely indecipherable to an outside eye. If you want people to spend time on your poem trying to get them to decipher it, you have to engage them so that they want to, which means trying to at least ground them in some sense (for instance, you could be very clear about the setting and how this takes place more in an inner, psychological world) and then you can be as abstract as you want.
I really hope you consider what I've said, but, at any rate, good luck with your work!

[Max Franklin]

The format/punctuation reply was because of your critique. You said a question I should ponder is what kind of format I am trying to go with and maybe a general format will unify the piece.

But anyhow I understand your critique/reply and I agree with it.

I will look at it again and make it suitable for "publishing."

P.S After you read the note and reread the poem it still wasn't clear?

[Emma Olsen]

Ah, I think I meant more rhyme scheme. I might've not been clear. It seemed like the rhyme was inconsistent, even though well done in a number of places.
I got the poem with the note, I just think that the note shouldn't be necessary, if that makes sense? =) At least not for describing the amount of aspects of your poem that it does. The note gives me a clear idea into your intention, but I don't think a lot of it is translating.

[Max Franklin]

I replied the first time without fully understanding you but now I do. I really want to thank you for taking the time to help me with this piece. As a writer I know you can relate but I still would like to emphasize how much I appreciate your help.

Thank you.

[Emma Olsen]

Ok, so, I think I'm still experiencing some confusion. I'll try to point out lines that are throwing me off. The first stanza is setting me up for the 'inside my mind' concept, but this line: "happening behind" is throwing me off. Behind what? Your eyelids or something? Typically I wouldn't associate 'behind' with the inner world of a person.
Additionally, I think, while with your note I understand your intent, the description of choosing between good and evil as 'supernatural forces' is detracting from the idea that the 'I' has control of which they choose and that it actually is a choice they're making. You seem to want to explore the idea of good and evil controlling the 'I,' but if that's the case I think the forces need to be personified and described more so that you have the opportunity to illuminate this aspect of control because it doesn't sound to me as if the 'I's convinced that they have lost control. I see you're trying to use 'directional' to indicate a pulling on the scale of morality, but next to 'supernatural forces' I think of a storm and directional links to north, south, east, west, NOT good or bad.
In regards to the line: "in one of the inhabitants," I'm not sure what the speaker's actually referring to because I haven't been lead to think the forces are inhabitants or anything, know what I mean? From your descriptions, the 'I' sounds like the inhabitant, but the 's' indicates at least two, so you aren't referring to the 'I.' At first I assumed you meant the forces, but the description tells me that it's either fear or love. You mention both "fear and love reside," but the association with an 'inhabitant' lies only in that verb and I'm afraid it's buried too far back, so I have to really go looking for what you mean, disrupting the flow of the poem.
Next: "This time it doesn't pick love." Who/what is 'it?' I get from your note you mean 'it' to be a demon, but this line is still causing me confusion. I'd rather you fleshed out the idea of the demon and angel more, as I said above, and have them maybe be actual people who tug the speaker in one direction or the other. This way you can explore more emotional impact with more direct language.
"the heavenly soul it has you believe" What, exactly, is going on here? Is the demon lying or something? What is the speaker supposed to believe? Totally lost.
"The body begins to bleed" - whose body? The speaker's? Why is the body bleeding at all if this is supposed to be a somewhat physical manifestation of the effects of a choice on a person (or maybe lack of choice.) Maybe some illumination into what evil deed the speaker was pulled into might help explain this whole poem more, you know?
"Bolts close the door,/ seals the light through the floor./ Flight to freedom's now obscure." Is this intended to show that the speaker's locked in the demon's possession, now . . . ? That they can't make any other choice?
"It wants you to fight,/ nay pleads, to harness your might." So . . . who has control? It's fine if you speak of some subversion later on, but you talk about control in your note and I'm not really getting that the speaker's being 'controlled.' A plea is something that shows the one who's being plead to has control. It's fine if you want a questionable control relationship in here, but I think there are better ways to communicate it, especially as the speaker then goes on to lament how they don't have control in the next stanza.
"clothed in a primal energy in the identity?" I get where you mean to go with this line, but it's confusing. (I'd also like to say that, while I understand things are difficult to resist sometimes, I'm not understanding what makes this instance so impossible to resist unless the speaker has some kind of issue with compulsiveness? As said, an elaboration on the situation might be helpful.)
"To capture an outside monster/ in an innate emotion of character./ The "I" can never be an ouster." Also confused by this portion, as I'm not sure what you mean by an outside monster. Is this the devil? It's a bit too vague. I don't think I understand, either WHY the 'I' can't be an ouster. That may be a crucial problem in your poem you need to address, especially since so much of humanity is convinced in the idea of free will and choice. If you believe in us all being pawns of destiny or something, that's fine, but I think a few other aspects of this poem are currently questioning that outlook, so I feel that you need to justify, to some extent, why the speaker feels incapable of fighting back against evil when they very clearly seem to not want to engage in it. Maybe you're trying to justify it in the next stanza, but it doesn't seem like enough compared to all this talk about struggle. Maybe because the speaker is the I and they're the one telling me how the force has won over them? Somehow it doesn't sound as if the speaker's given up, you know?
"The smile will spear" Odd use of 'spear' as a verb. I'm not sure what you're getting at.
"Faith now visible from the smear,/ the hand of self-sustaining life finally clear," I'm a bit lost here. What do you mean? How is faith visible? How is faith involved at all in this moment? I'm not sure what's inspiring it. Is it supposed to be a faith that God will be leading the speaker to do good in the future? I think that's what you're getting at as the poem progresses, but I don't see WHY there's faith that all will be well. I think I need some kind of physical demonstration that somehow the fortune of the speaker's changed. Or is this some realization of control over the demons and angels? Is the speaker changing at the end somehow? The pronouns change a bit and I'm not sure if the 'I' is the one referring to his/herself as a 'coward.'
I hope that helps.

[Emma Olsen]

Oh, damn, I was in the middle of writing that. haha Sorry. Well, hopefully that's helpful, anyways.

[Emma Olsen]

It was long so it took forever. =P