Monthly Archives: November 2011

62. Forfeit

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Review of Forfeit

Summary

Forfeit is a raw, emotionally honest poem about the lingering wounds left by betrayal and emotional harm, and the quiet decision to withdraw from love—not out of apathy, but self-protection. The speaker acknowledges that they still know they deserve love, “like you know your own name,” yet the pain of past injury creates an inner resistance. The poem traces the complex dance between desire and disillusionment, longing and loss, and the slow erosion of trust in a world where “love’s not a game.”

Why This Poem Matters

What makes this poem resonate so deeply is its emotional specificity—it doesn’t generalise about heartbreak, it embodies it. From the first lines:

“So even though you know / That you deserve love / Like you know your own name / Like you know the colour of the sky”

We are reminded that the speaker’s belief in their worth isn’t the problem—it’s not low self-esteem or confusion. The awareness is intact. But knowledge alone isn’t enough to heal the kind of soul-deep hurt that reshapes your experience of love.

“Because the pieces of your heart / Back together anymore, don’t quite fit”

Here, the metaphor of a broken heart is literalised. It’s not just broken—it’s been reassembled, but misaligned. There’s a beautiful sadness in this image, like trying to glue a shattered bowl only to find that the cracks still show, and it doesn’t quite hold water.

This sense of misalignment continues with:

“And you don’t quite feel like dancing anymore / To the acid-jazz waltz, tango, tiptoe / Through love’s emotional array”

This dance imagery is rich: waltz, tango, tiptoe—romantic movements, now tinged with discomfort. “Acid-jazz” adds a layer of dissonance, suggesting that even beauty now feels off-key. This isn’t just the avoidance of love; it’s a sensory disorientation, a kind of emotional synaesthesia where joy has been rewired to pain.

The poem then drills into the cause:

“Downright wilful damage by those / Entrusted with the care and condition / Of one’s tender heart throes”

This is one of the most powerful turns in the piece. It’s not simply about heartbreak—it’s about betrayal of trust. The emphasis on entrustment elevates the emotional stakes. The damage wasn’t accidental. It was deliberate—or at least, careless enough to feel deliberate.

“Can never be forgotten / Never be the same”

This is a quiet but irrevocable truth. The speaker isn’t melodramatic here—they’re matter-of-fact. The experience has changed them. There is no going back to a time before the fracture. That truth gives this poem its gravitas.

And then we arrive at a final unraveling:

“Predisposed / To never staying present in the now and again / For any decent length of time”

This is a striking way to describe trauma’s lingering effects: not just in the heart, but in time itself. The present becomes a hostile or unstable space. The mind fractures, loops, dissociates. You can’t anchor yourself anymore, not securely.

The closing lines affirm the poem’s central moral:

“Fractured heart, tangled mind / Love’s not a game, / Love’s not a game!”

By ending on repetition, the poet underlines the injustice that’s occurred: love, which should be sacred, mutual, and nourishing, has been treated as disposable, strategic—even cruel. This emphatic repetition becomes a protest, a reclamation of truth.

The Metaphysical and the Material

Though grounded in human pain, the poem still has a spiritual pulse. There’s a metaphysical thread running through it—about time, memory, emotional inheritance. “Seasonal ghosts and echoes” hint at the cyclical haunting of past experience, which now lives almost autonomously in the psyche.

And yet, the metaphysical doesn’t escape the material—heart and mind are still bound to the body’s capacity to feel, to remember, to react. This fusion gives the poem its power.

In Conclusion

Forfeit is a deeply compassionate meditation on how people can retreat from love, not because they’ve stopped believing in it, but because they’ve been deeply injured by its misuse. The poem invites the reader into that intimate, silent place where love is still wanted—but no longer feels safe.

It reminds us that love, in its truest form, demands responsibility, care, and reverence. And when that reverence is broken, the damage can linger far beyond the original rupture.

With this piece, the poet speaks to anyone who’s ever tried to put themselves back together—and found that the pieces, though present, no longer align.

Direct link to Noēma Poēma bookshop.
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61. Peachy

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Peachy has a strikingly different tone—cynical yet poetic, vivid yet bleak. It brings a sharp satirical lens to the mythos of Western progress, prosperity, and the decay of collective dreams.

Review of Peachy

Summary

Peachy is a compact, sharply observant poem that acts as a requiem for the shattered illusions of the so-called “American Dream.” Framed as a surreal journey down a metaphorical highway, the speaker finds themselves arriving not at the utopia promised by consumerism, but at the rusted-out endpoint of a world built on economic overreach, industrial decline, and spiritual starvation. What once appeared “peachy” is revealed to be spoiled—seductive but empty.

Why This Poem Matters

This poem is deceptively simple in its structure, but packed with powerful imagery and critique. It opens with a stark metaphor:

“Driving down the highway to the future / I reach a dead end”

This sets the tone immediately—a collision between expectation and reality. The “highway to the future” evokes a sense of hopeful progress, mobility, freedom, and speed, all archetypal themes in the mythology of the West, especially America. But instead of opportunity, we hit a wall. This is a journey that doesn’t go anywhere anymore.

The speaker continues, offering another image of arrival:

“Riding on the western freeway, I arrive / At post-industrial decay”

There’s a sense of poetic symmetry here. The “western freeway” isn’t just a geographical direction—it becomes a symbol of the entire Western industrial-capitalist project, and we are told exactly where it has led: into decay.

“End of the economic line / For these incorporated times”

This line delivers a blunt yet poetic economic truth—the end of a system built on extraction and promise. The phrase “incorporated times” sharply critiques a society that has become governed by corporate interests rather than human values. What once promised endless opportunity has reached terminal velocity.

“No more land of opportunity / No more pieces left / Of the American Dream pie”

These lines reference the core myth that built America’s global allure—that if you worked hard, you too could prosper. But here, that dream is exposed as exhausted and unequal. The “pie in the sky” has vanished, and only the memory of its sweetness remains. Even that image is undercut with sarcasm:

“Blueberries and cream / Seductive illusions to confuse and fool”

The poem doesn’t just mourn the lost dream—it challenges it. The imagery of rich, comforting dessert is used here ironically, to show how consumerist aesthetics were used to pacify people, to distract them from systemic injustice or unfulfilled lives.

Then comes a harsh, grounding reality:

“Hard lessons life has to teach / Improvised survival / Aspirational lifestyles, high and dry out of reach”

These lines paint the real lived experience of the post-industrial age. With the social contract broken, people are left to fend for themselves, improvising their survival in a world where aspirational imagery still floods their screens but remains inaccessible. It’s a powerful commentary on the gap between image and reality—between branding and being.

The poem closes with:

“A requiem for The Lost Age / Of the Golden Peach.”

The “Golden Peach” is a stunning metaphor. It conjures a vision of abundance, sweetness, fertility, perhaps even Georgia’s symbol of Southern wealth and hospitality. But this “Golden Peach” is now lost. And with it, a whole generation’s dream of fulfillment through material success and social mobility.

The title Peachy is revealed, ironically, to be the most biting commentary of all—what was once “peachy” is now spoiled, overripe, fallen.

In Conclusion

Peachy is a succinct and poignant cultural critique that punches far above its word count. In just a handful of lines, it manages to encapsulate the spiritual bankruptcy of late capitalism, the collapse of collective dreams, and the empty promises of a system in decline. Through poetic metaphor, biting irony, and clear-eyed reflection, the poem walks the line between mourning and awakening.

It’s a lament—but also a wake-up call. A signpost on the “highway to the future,” warning us that the destination isn’t what we were sold. And perhaps, that the dream must now be reimagined—not as a pie in the sky, but as something more grounded, more real, and more just.

Direct link to Noēma Poēma bookshop.
This track is available for instant download from bandcamp.

60. If I Could Turn Back Time

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Second Chance

Review of Turn Back Time

Saturday 12th November 2011

Summary

In Turn Back Time, the speaker reflects on the hypothetical possibility of returning to the past and altering key moments. As they ponder what they might change—whether to undo pain or to conform to societal expectations—the speaker grapples with the tension between personal evolution and the desire for love and acceptance. Ultimately, the poem reveals that embracing one’s true self, with all its struggles and lessons, is the only path forward, as the speaker realizes that the growth they’ve experienced wouldn’t have been possible without the very challenges that once seemed like burdens.

Why This Poem Matters

The poem begins with the universal question of whether we would change our past if given the chance. This question is a profound one because it taps into the human desire to erase regret or undo painful experiences. The speaker, in asking, “Would I change a thing?”, immediately brings us into a reflective space. They question whether the desire to undo past suffering, or to return to the “simplicity” of a previous relationship, is worth forsaking everything they’ve learned:

“Would I take away the pain / Would I succumb to the desire / To be your darling again”

These early lines express a longing to go back to a time when life was simpler, possibly when love seemed more straightforward, or when the speaker was more “compliant and tame” to others’ expectations. But as the speaker delves deeper into their thoughts, they begin to recognize the value of the lessons learned through hardship and personal struggle, suggesting that this is a part of their growth, which they wouldn’t give up:

“Perhaps I would collapse myself / Into ego seduction and personal gain / Perhaps I would close down, shut off / From the responsibility of staying conscious”

This internal dialogue serves as a warning to the self about the dangers of falling back into old patterns—of choosing comfort over growth, or allowing ego and societal pressure to dictate their path. The speaker acknowledges the ease with which they could have followed the path of least resistance, but this is also framed as a denial of the authentic self, a suppression of their soul’s deeper purpose.

The poem takes a turn when the speaker realizes that their struggles, including the pain of love and loss, have served a higher purpose. It is through the challenges—the “burr” or “thorn” in their soul—that they have been pushed to evolve and fulfill their potential:

“For without that burr / Thorn in my soul / Splinter in my heart / I would never have been spurred on”

This imagery of the “thorn” in the heart is powerful, suggesting that pain and difficulty, though uncomfortable, are often the catalysts for growth. The speaker understands that these hardships are not only part of their personal evolution, but they are essential to their unique journey:

“I would never have been spurred on / To go the extra hundred thousand miles / Light-years, lifetimes, incarnations”

Here, the speaker recognizes that the distance they have traveled—spiritually and emotionally—couldn’t have been achieved without the transformative power of their challenges. The very pain that once seemed unbearable has propelled them into an expansive journey of self-awareness and spiritual development, which the speaker now embraces fully. This idea of distance, whether measured in miles or lifetimes, reinforces the deep, almost cosmic nature of this personal evolution.

The closing lines encapsulate the speaker’s acceptance of their path, as they acknowledge that they cannot—and would not—want to go back. The journey they’ve undertaken, with all its trials and triumphs, is part of their destiny:

“So be it / And it is done.”

The use of “So be it” invokes a sense of finality and acceptance—an affirmation that the speaker has made peace with their past, recognizing that each step along the way was necessary for their growth.

In Conclusion

Turn Back Time is a meditation on the inevitability of change, growth, and the acceptance of one’s journey. The speaker acknowledges the temptation to undo past pain, but they ultimately realize that their hardships have shaped them into who they are today. This realization transforms regret into gratitude, as the speaker understands that each challenge has played an essential role in their evolution.

The poem’s strength lies in its honest exploration of the tension between the desire for love and the necessity of self-empowerment. The speaker must choose to evolve, not only for their own growth but to honor the deeper, divine calling they sense within themselves. By the end, the poem leaves the reader with the profound idea that personal transformation often comes at the cost of comfort, but it is through embracing the difficulties of life that we fulfill our true potential.

A beautiful poem, one that examines the interplay between self-acceptance, love, and the push for continual growth.