Add To The Pile

Show me a sign
We’ll both call it fine
Tragic as ever/
never been better

Dark denial
Add to the pile

Cadence is key
Throw me the tee
Passing for passion you guess
Give it a rest

Warm to hot
Disappointing thoughts
Painful reminder
Complicit at best

Dark denial
Add to the pile

Say it again
Won’t trick this new friend
Passing for lashes I guess
Head on your chest

Go one more round
Not lost and not found
Stagnant til the end
Nothing to mend

Dark denial
We can add to the pile

A poem in 26 lines, 7 stanzas, and end rhymes that make the work almost wholly symmetrical. Quatrains serving as a narrative, while couplets give a meditative reminder of the apathetic speaker. The structure is true to the apparent nature and state of the speaker, calculated and aware and composed to a point, but losing consistency in the less obvious aspects of language. The end rhymes are consistent except for a break in rhyme pattern in line 13 for a “Painful reminder,” in a way that one might choke down a sob. The syllabic count is patternless yet affiliated, and the changes it produces in texture mimics each thought.

The title lends itself well to reading immediately into the piece with its demand, and establishes the spiritless tone from the speaker.

Show me a sign
We’ll both call it fine
Tragic as ever/
never been better

Immediately we know that the speaker is looking for something, with the knowledge that both they and the partner will allow the malignant truth to masquerade as innocuous. The acknowledgment that it has been done before, followed by the sarcastic positive appraisal lays the foundation for the descent into the narrative.

Dark denial
Add to the pile

The couplet that repeats in stanzas 2, 4, and (closely) 7, builds the tension that accompanies an apathetic voice. The pervasive and gloomy words spring back just when the reader thinks it’s over, and soon is a justly identified pattern, with its structure matching the content, ambiguously justifying actions by either themselves or their partner.

“Cadence is key”, the speaker’s (cold) desire for their partner to match their tempo, although the cadence of the writing itself lacks the natural flow that comes with speech. This insight into the dissonance between what the speaker wants and how those desires are actualized drives the wedge further between pair, and the ambivalence from the partner followed by the speaker’s irritation in lines 9-10 is the immediate result.

At this point the roles become blurred and the reader may struggle to identify who is being analyzed, perhaps finding difficulty identifying with either the speaker or their partner while the clarity suffers a breakdown. It is unclear whether this is simply proverbial smoke and mirrors or a bonafide duality that exists between the pair. These lines beckon for one to pick a side, with dread, knowing that it might be the malicious of the two.

Say it again
Won’t trick this new friend
Passing for lashes I guess
Head on your chest

This reference to another poem,​ “Reload, Beg, Plead” (​ F. Nosbier)​, ​brings the narrative further into obscurity. Is this the self-talk of the speaker? Or is the referenced writing the perspective of the willing party? The speaker’s reference to “lashes,” intentionally inflicted pain that runs the gamut from physical to mental and everything in between appears to be expected, and the ambivalent “I guess” tacked on lazily to the line brings even more inability to discern the roles each person in the pair plays. These thoughts end with the reassurance of the speaker’s head on the partner’s chest, finding comfort in the companionship even after deceit and pain, or guilt and reconciliation.

In the end it doesn’t matter, as the speaker acknowledges the there is nothing to look for and nothing to find, nothing to fix or rescue amongst the pair, or at least, nothing they want to be bothered with. The partners, in the last stanza, are now complicit in their crime, as the duality of the two is finalized with the acceptance of their cyclical denial.