Through a Surreal Mirror, I Gazed One Day

Through a Surreal Mirror, I Gazed One Day

Drudgery at life is disastrous
   (Drudgery at death is rather pointless)
Opening us all to theft of spirit
   (Opening, hell, inviting is the truth)
Never to be whole, never to be healed.
   (Mayhaps less worry and much more action)
Though we may often stab and thrust at bliss
   (And maim it and leave it a horrid mess)
Broken dreams are the bloody consequence
   (Not as much broken as destroyed with will)
Even while we pine and voice our desire
   (Upending all good sense in the process)
All that we hold is ragged deception;
   (Perhaps 'snatch' is a more accurate word)
Pestilence that saturates our marrow
   (But always invited, begged, to fester)
Reeling us through darkness and agony
   (Into the circumstance we have chosen)
Instilling us with intertwined despair
   (Twined neatly around our own self-loathing)
Coldly mocking our dwindling conviction
   (Crushing the haphazard way we built it)
Killing our souls one hushed inch at a time.
   (Happiness is a choice, not a token)



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There is more than meets the eye going on in this piece.  I first had the idea some months back and wrote out the main point and have revisited it for the November Contest:

November

• Sonnet or blank verse (iambic pentameter)
• Cannot be a love poem of any kind
• Prize is a selection of five (5) 6 ounce bars of handmade boutique soap

I choose blank verse and I do not believe this could be considered a love poem in any way, shape, or form.  This is what I call a response poem.  The primary lines are a standard poem, albeit not one I would normally write.  The parenthesed lines are rather harsh comments or responses to and on the primary lines.  The poem can be read without the comments and it's one poem, with the comments it becomes another.  And, as I mentioned, since there is more going on than there seems, there is a 3rd way to read it that has a different message.

The main point here was to create a contest entry, I just went a little further as an added challenge.  Neopoet being a workshop after all.

Where is your entry?