One more time now — looking behind the writing at the poem I wrote most recently: A Modern Wasteland…

It has honestly been such fun exploring this poem these last few weeks. Definitely going to try to do more poetry, in and around my other writing projects, in the future. But for now, let’s finish off with A Modern Wasteland‘s fourth and final chapter. Titled with my personal favourite line of the four used from The Sermon on the Mount: …AND TURN AGAIN AND REND YOU.

A MODERN WASTELAND

IV. AND TURN AGAIN AND REND YOU

To my little estate I now retire

My sitting-room, my settee

Supine upon this couch I now expire

And muse on how I got here.

They all tell me not to dwell on past failures.

Impossible when all you see around you,

The endless visits from the Duvaliers,

The cards and biscuits – they’re all that’s left

Meanwhile, she’s out there somewhere – the victor with the spoils.

Her crimes were more on par with those of Marion Crane

Than with those of Lady Dedlock.

And yet ‘twas I who was dubbed profane.

A spectral voice inquires, “Could you forgive her?”

“Forgive her? Forgive me!” I realise I’m being an disgracious host.

“Has anyone offered you tea?”

They sit and stare – have I become the ghost?

“Monsieur — Sir Jack and Mr Gibson are leaving,” I’m told.

“Oh God, how rude of me,” I say.

And thus on reality I have an ever-loosening hold,

Lost in this mire of melancholy.

I resolve to sit here in my turban,

My monocle and my cigarette in a holder

And languish here for years uncertain

Diminishing.

It was here that I was really inspired to expand upon the whole poem and turn it into a prose narrative. Oddly enough, the only line where I had to cop out — for lack of a rhyme for “failures” — sealed the deal. That will hopefully settle any queries that anyone has about what I meant by “the Duvaliers”. When I eventually get around to turning the whole Modern Wasteland into a prose piece, the Duvaliers will serve as supporting characters, as will Sir Jack and Mr Gibson (named after two of my best friends – just the latest in a series of allusions I like to include).

Who can pick out the cultural references in this stanza? And what they might mean? Well, for those still unsure, it’s a comparison between Marion Crane, from Robert Bloch’s Psycho (or more specifically Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation thereof where she was played by Janet Leigh), and Lady Honoria Dedlock from Dickens’ Bleak House. Last week, you saw the narrator decide to let go of his failing marriage. Now we learn that, rather than sleep with men she wasn’t married to (as Lady Dedlock did), she embezzled money, as Crane did. Now riddled with grief and almost catatonic with depression, our narrator falls in and out of full consciousness, only partly aware of the visitors who show him support.

And that’s that! Thank you all as ever for your support. More updates and side-projects to come in the new year.

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Heading into the third part of my T.S. Eliot-inspired piece, A Modern Wasteland. What’s the story behind the story this time…?

I’d like to begin by once again saying thank you for all your kind comments and feedback. It has been much appreciated. And it keeps me wondering over and over, should I have left poetry behind in the first place? To the point where I have been contemplating entering The White Review‘s latest Poet’s Prize with it (alongside My To-Do List and a couple of others I’ve been thinking of writing). Let me know if you think I should (or should not, as the case may be!)

But let’s move onto A Modern Wasteland‘s third stave, entitled, as a continuation of the Sermon on the Mount reference, …LEST THEY TRAMPLE THEM UNDER THEIR FEET…

A MODERN WASTELAND

III. LEST THEY TRAMPLE THEM UNDER THEIR FEET

We’ve lived this way for three years now

And what comfortable hour can you name

That ever graced me with your company?

Here we go – tossing ‘round the blame.

You came upon me as a princess,

Cloaked in velvet – a delicate gem.

But you quickly shed your innocence

And all became yours to condemn.

Thus the witch was surely born.

No Sycorax or Maleficent,

More a siren, pure on the surface

A celestial bride, most magnificent,

But a creature who would sooner kick the dog

Than shower it with modes of affection.

Time is running out for me,

This misery confines and offers little objection.

And hence I abandon you at last

Weighted by my regret for years wasted

In solitude and solace I may find

The joy I should long since have tasted.

I have deliberately made the setting of this poem’s narrative, both geographical and historical, very vague. As with Eliot’s original The Waste Land, I wanted to employ some cultural references, however sporadically. And because, as cultural references go, I enjoy a very eclectic mix, I thought it would be fun to highlight that by using two ends of the spectrum. In this stanza, I only use two cultural references, both in the same line. Two witches – Sycorax and Maleficent. The former, an unseen character from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the mother of Caliban. The latter, most of you will know as the main antagonist from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, and later on in various Kingdom Hearts games.

Otherwise… can you sense the theme of this stanza? We have had meanness in Part I, guilt in Part II. Now we’re dealing with betrayal and acceptance or realisation that a person is a bad egg. Quite happy to say I’ve known very few such people in my life, but all the same, they helped inspire this next part of A Modern Wasteland.

Part IV and final comes next week. Spoiler alert… don’t look for anything festive to finish off. This poem isn’t telling a happy tale.

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