Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Just for Today
Just for Today
Be her mirror. When you are faced with
those cotton-candy cheeks, those orphan annie
eyes, that empty face of never facing anything:
Don't take your escape. Stand firm and feel.
Don't already know what you're going to say.
Face that sad jesus and say something real.
Tell her your soul is not the one in need.
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I brought a lot with me to this poem, so when I read the title, I was already deeply engaged. Because of what we had been talking about, the first two lines made me immediately think of BK, but then the third line blew the poem open in a major way.
ReplyDeleteThe most amazing part of this poem is that the speaker could be talking to the self, or to a mother (I lean toward this because that's what I want today) or to anyone in pain, who either doesn't realize they are in pain, or deflects that pain by caring for someone else. How we love to deflect by caring for someone else...(or even just focusing on someone else for whatever)
I love not knowing who the "her" is, and being a little lost about it at first - the details that follow are so strange (original) and so complete, sweetness, a lonely, empty shell, avoidance (cotton candy orphan annie empty face) - it could be anyone, it's probably you (speaker) or you (reader) but it doesn't matter. ...and then a serious wallop with the empty face of never facing anything - besides being brilliantly metered, and having the word face in it twice (three times in stanza 1 - different iterations! You so crazy good!) and therefore becoming the kind of line that you can't get out of your head, it could mean two things: if you bring sweetness to the poem (which I did not) you could read that as a face of youth, of potential, a face of no wrinkles because it hasn't had to deal yet. If you bring pain to the poem (which I did) you can read that almost as admonition: when you look at yourself (or whoever) and you can't stand the sight of your own weakness...
...don't escape. keep looking. walk through your fears. be in the moment. be real. You killed it, simply killed it rhyming feel and real. And sad Jesus! What the! I know that face and ALL that comes with it! To bring it in just then lays another level down (of loneliness, perhaps, by choice, martyr). And how weird and wonderful for it to belong to the same poem that's talking about cotton candy and orphan annie!
And the final line just turns the whole thing inside out: there's such a complete sorrow for me in that line - the word soul is so tender to even bring it up at all hurts a little, shows a real vulnerability of the speaker, and when I read it as if it is speaker talking to a mother, I love the way it flips the known dynamic of who cares for whom. And if I take it to mean the speaker speaking to her own mirror image, then it's like, the sweetness inside is almost begging that outside, maquillaged shell of a person to confront her own pain.
I probably am not even making sense anymore because the poem is just saying so many things to me on so many levels about recognizing our own frailties I'm just altered by it, I just feel it. The rhymes are so good.
So SP - that's three. So. F-ing. Awesome.