Misery

[DanFC]

Misery


Is it misery to amusedly revel in my own madness?
Is it beautiful to cede ascendancy for not one soul and mine?

I see olden man blinded by the sky,
I see men now without an eye.
Do they see how they wither,
Their putrid bodies without blight?

I see boys of young and old,
Crippled losing legs and arms,
Are they bucking ugly ogres or
Do our heroes fear death so vain?

But best yet I see another
Just like me just so much older.
He wallows in a misery
All alone in his commissary.
Is this what I’ll befall myself?
Is this what chance holds for me?

But is what I see the truth?
Is what I note the reality?
But does it matter, and does it matter
What miracles may make over me?
For what I see could be me, both one I know and one I’m not,
All is one, one misery, in serenity forever.

 

[Lorraine Manca]

its a good poem mr, did you write it?

 

[DanFC]

Yeap, did most of it during one of my more dissociated states and refined it recently.

 

[lithium]

Yeap, did most of it during one of my more dissociated states and refined it recently.

Are you referring to a mind-altered state?

 

[DanFC]

Like drugs? No. Just how I sometimes am with my depressive lows.

 

[Lorraine Manca]

i dont think i understand your poem completely. i know ive gotten confused about those kinds of things too. i want a good life and no suffering, but why should i have a good life when there are other people who dont. or would it be more meaningful to suffer so you could have a sort of communion and share in the worlds pain. rather than being happy and ignorant of the pain so many people feel. in that sense, happiness would be like apathy, which is awful. none of it makes sense to me.

your poem reminds me of a Hardy poem:

Hap

IF but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased, too, that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan....
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

 

[DanFC]

That Hardy poem is really good, I should read more from him.

And I don't think my poem's as complex as you make it out to be. The first stanza is self-reflection related to self-masochism. Then it goes from what the speaker sees in himself to what he sees in others, at which point it's closer to what you're speaking of.

The second stanza speaks of this happiness that is more like apathy, of how from our ancestors we've tried to grasp happiness, but now we've come to the point where this search has led to a blindness of sorts to pain, both from ourselves and others. This is different from those who are naive of themselves and others, as they try to fight against their inner demons by being their own heroes. In the end though, the speaker sees these people as scared of their own fate.

The third stanza has the reader see his own future, and he torments himself within this and the following stanza over his fate and the futility of any sort of salvation, which ties back to the self-reflection from the first stanza. The last few lines deal with the speaker realizing his true self and coming to terms with it. However, with how I made the poem, the reader must ask himself if the speaker is only giving in to his depraving ways, has found solace, or maybe something else.