When I was posting the first few parts of THE ROOF, I thought there would be more random posts, because I planned to have links from one blog post to another based on the reader's choices in the narrative. When I realized I could use my tumblr as a separate destination for linked posts, this cleaned up how many posts I would have to have here. It did mean, though, that I had to reconsider one plan I had for these sort of excess posts. The only one I actually posted here is "CARD" and in writing that post I also composed a poem. I was a bit scared of the poem because I didn't want it to be taken the wrong way (which I'll address below); to temper my fears I thought I would stagger the release of the poem and include one additional line as the pre-jump text in each one of these excess blog posts proposed in my mind. Now that I've changed that plan, I'm posting the poem all together, which is probably for the best.
"Lives that Matter"
What is evil? Evil is live
backwards. Is living
the opposite of evil?
Evil is a word.
Words are found
expressions of sound.
Who's that you slay?
Know how much to pay.
N-word backwards is drown.
It's possible that THE ROOF will have more accessory posts like "CARD" in the future. I certainly want to do some stupid flyers eventually. It'll never happen but I just love the idea of THE ROOF being staged on a college campus somewhere where you could be walking to class, see a flyer on a wall, and then, on your way back to the dorm, just walk into the play for half an hour if you wanted. Theatre as museum exhibit, as I've put it before.
So, yes, "CARD" may not be a unique post, but it initially had the pre-jump text: "What is evil? Evil is live" which I've now edited since I'm not presenting the poem that way any longer. Like I said above, I was motivated to do this with the poem because it scared me to simply post it--but! fear does not necessitate a complete lack of reasoning. I saw this as an homage to Kendrick Lamar and his poem that is presented in chunks throughout To Pimp a Butterfly, "I remember you was conflicted." Eventually this poem becomes essentially a piece of theatre itself, when it culminates into a dialogue between Lamar and the ghost of Tupac at the end of the album. It's surprising how relevant that conversation feels right now. Then again it's sad to think how relevant a song like "Brenda's Got a Baby" from Tupac's first album still is today which was recorded the year before I was even born. It's interesting to think of how activism in art would lead to wanting your work to change the world and then, in this changed world, for your work to be dated and not as relevant or impacting as it once was. How that could be success for an artist.
I'm not a language poet; I have no problem talking about my work. That said, I do think the meaning of a poem is largely dependent on the reader to determine. It's possible you can read more into my poem than I intend, which is where my fear arose in posting it. That said, as I've heard more people talk about the ridiculousness that is "All Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" movements forming in direct contrast to the "Black Lives Matter" movement, I feel better about posting it now (and hey, it doesn't hurt that I'm taking this moment to explain it either!). What's funny is that if "All Lives Matter" was a movement that believed its own words, it would be revolutionary. It would stand against the injustices faced by people of color and other discriminated groups.
Yes, all lives matter; yes, the lives of first responders and police matter; but to say "black lives matter" isn't to dispute either of those claims. There are things that matter more than words and unfortunately in this country the words that say that black lives matter as much as other lives, the words that undid a literal equation that made black lives legally matter only a fraction as much as white lives, are just words. We are in a time of reckoning where we will hopefully bring more accountability to those words.
When I initially wrote the poem two and a half weeks ago, it didn't have a title. As I've done here before, the title I came up with pays respect to Judith Butler's Bodies that Matter. It's been interesting to see that all this discussion of words, "black," "all," or "blue," has led to a discussion of other words. There have been multiple scandals in college football where players have come forward about previous incidents where white coaches have used the n-word, for example. I feel like the last stanza of the poem speaks to some specific situations and perhaps brings to mind details of some of the tragedies we have witnessed, but I thought drowning was a broad enough metaphor that ending the poem in this way would suggest the horror of all the black lives that haven't mattered as they should in this country.
It's funny where inspiration comes from. Many people have used "evil" and "live" to create palindromes and I'm sure people have considered the two words in similar fashion to how I've done here. I think the idea for thinking about "n-word" backwards as "drown" came from an episode of, of all places!, Guy's Grocery Games, where Guy Fieri pointed out that "desserts" backwards is "stressed." It's odd enough when a word creates another word when you reverse it, but when those words seem to have a poetic ("desserts"/"stressed"), tragic ("n-word"/"drown"), or philosophical ("evil"/"live") connection as well, it's quite surprising!
Finally, a technical note. I wasn't sure how best to include this but I think placing it last in our culture of "tl;dr" is the best place for it. This post has largely moved in level of importance from the most important to the least. Feel free to stop reading now! The political conversation above is a lot more interesting and necessary to have than anything else I'm going to write here. You've been warned! Here's a consideration of a technique I was going for in the poem:
I messed around with the formatting of the poem at first. I think the first lines were initially, "What is evil?/Evil is live backwards," which I shifted to the current structure. This forms not exactly a transformative line break but it can intentionally confuse the reader because of the homographs (a new word I just learned 🤣) "live" and "live." Homographs are two words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently and have different meanings. It is likely that the only way you would confuse a word for its homograph is through reading the word, rather than hearing it when the pronunciation would clarify the intended meaning. Are you lost? It's okay, let's go back to the poem and read the first line:
What is evil? Evil is liveIt's possible that "live" and "live" are not technically homographs because I think one word is probably derived from the other, but they are two distinct words with different meanings and pronunciations. Wikipedia provides an example of a homograph with the words "sow" as in "to sow seeds" and "sow" as in a female pig. I believe that changing the line break in my poem perhaps makes readers consider how to pronounce the word "live" with a bit more focus when they reach it. I read it as "Evil is live" like "Live from New York, it's Saturday night!" but it doesn't really matter how you read it aloud because that is simply an expression of the word. The meaning is unclear so that, like Schrödinger's cat, the written word is both words and meanings at once. What's funny is now that I've added the title to the poem, when people read the first line they will likely echo the title of the poem and read "live" in the context of "Lives," but will they echo the pronunciation and read it as I do or will they echo the meaning and read it as in "to live" (which is much closer in meaning to "lives" than "live" as in not previously recorded)?
I think this is very fitting for a poem like this one that plays with language and reverses words. I don't think there is a right way to read the poem, I just wanted to share how I personally read it. How each reader reads it is obviously the right way for that reader. I do have an interest in writing a poem that would use homographs and possibly homophones in a more complicated way where there would be a correct way to read it, hopefully clear from context clues. There is a type of poem called a sestina in which there are six stanzas of six lines each and then I think a three line ending stanza. In the six six line stanzas (which looks like a typo, doesn't it? 😉) the last words of each line repeat from stanza to stanza in a specific order. I've always wanted to try to write a sestina with homographs or homonyms at the end of each lines so that the written words are repeated but the meanings shift and change. Maybe one day!
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