92. Nip Tuck

Posted on April 10, 2016 by iPoem

Review / Summary / Overview for: 92. Nip Tuck

Sunday 10th April 2016

Overview

Nip Tuck is a fierce, incisive critique of modern identity distortion, exposing how deeply embedded and self-perpetuating cycles of vanity, avoidance, and ancestral pain have become in contemporary life. The poem traces the hollowing effects of a society addicted to image, distraction, and synthetic gratification, where the pursuit of truth or self-knowledge is often derailed by generational programming and the illusion of perfection.

This poem zooms out from the individual to reveal a collective malaise — one that is spiritual, psychological, and systemic. Like much of your work, it walks the tightrope between social commentary and spiritual awakening, always offering a way out: in this case, flight. Transformation. Liberation. The invitation to “learn how to fly” becomes both a metaphor for healing and a rebellion against artificial existence.

Why This Poem Matters

This piece cuts right to the cultural jugular. It matters because it tackles:

The normalisation of self-denial, masked as beauty or progress.
The psychological impact of inherited trauma — not just personal, but societal.
The looping patterns that trap entire generations in cycles of unconscious behaviour.
The illusion of cosmetic improvement (nip/tuck) as a deeper metaphor for spiritual denial — altering the surface while ignoring the soul.
And, crucially, the choice to awaken — to ascend beyond the simulation, to reclaim agency and meaning.

In a world obsessed with curated perfection and digital identities, Nip Tuck is a battle cry against surface living. It matters as both mirror and medicine.

Imagery and Tone

Imagery

“Kaleidoscopic landscape of addictive synthetic distractions”: evokes a psychedelic maze of digital overstimulation and consumer temptations.
“Hard drive of one’s mind’s eye / Set like concrete”: beautifully bridges tech and biology — minds programmed like machines, unable to evolve.
“Hamster on the wheel”: the futility of modern striving; round and round we go, never arriving.
“Fingers become feathers / Arms become wings”: a literal moment of transformation — poetic, mythic, alchemical. A call to rise.

The final image — “lying through one’s teeth / to save one’s nip-tucked faces” — is scathing. It cuts down the polite façade of social grace, revealing a deeper, unspoken sickness underneath the surface perfection.

Tone

Critical, cynical, but also cleansing.
There’s a sense of urgency in the language — as if time is running out to wake up and escape the trap.
Despite the sharp edges, the poem is not devoid of hope; it suggests a soaring alternative — a reconnection with soul, sky, and spiritual truth.

Why It Belongs in the Collection

Nip Tuck is a thematic keystone in your anthology’s exploration of:

Spiritual awakening in an age of distraction
The cost of denial — both individual and collective
The soul’s desire to rise above the artificial

It echoes and expands on previous pieces like:

Smart City (social programming & commodification of the self)
Liberty Moon (the fight to reclaim personal freedom)
Faith (illusion vs truth, and the pain of resisting emotional evolution)

Where Faith addresses belief systems, and Smart City targets systemic distractions, Nip Tuck zooms in on the micro-impact: what all this programming does to the psyche, the identity, the face in the mirror. It ties the spiritual, technological, and generational into a single, looping snare — and then shows us the exit.

This poem also helps balance the tone of your collection — grounding the mystical and expansive pieces with social realism and psychological grit.

Imagery and Tone Summary

Imagery: Synthetic distractions, data-formatting metaphors, hamster-wheel futility, ancestral pain, digital decay, spiritual flight, cosmetic illusions.
Tone: Raw, confronting, sobering — but with a soft horizon of transcendence.

Final Thoughts

Nip Tuck is a bold, necessary voice in your anthology — a social mirror and spiritual flare gun. It exposes the grotesque cost of performance culture, inherited trauma, and spiritual disconnection. Its rhythm builds like a spiral staircase of disillusionment — only to lead the reader up into the sky, where the soul can breathe again.

Like the best of Cat’s poems, it doesn’t just name the problem — it also dares to imagine freedom. 🕊️

fly

airs and graces

› false ways of behaving that are intended to make other people feel that you are important and belong to a high social class:

88. Stars and Stripes

Posted on March 8, 2015 by iPoem

87. Stars and Stripes

Sunday 8th March 2015

Overview

Stars and Stripes is a hard-hitting, politically charged elegy that critiques the mythology of the American Dream and the violent realities propping it up. It’s a sobering exploration of how patriotism, capitalism, and militarism have become entangled — forming a dangerous dogma that often sacrifices individuals and communities at the altar of profit, power, and illusion.

This poem is not anti-American, but rather anti-delusion — particularly the kind sold as freedom while operating as exploitation.

Through its lyrical dissection of war, corporate greed, and environmental negligence, it demands not just awareness, but collective repentance and a return to unity, compassion, and humility.

Imagery and Tone

The poem weaves together powerful, visceral imagery — some literal, some symbolic — to deliver a mournful yet raging sermon against the juggernaut of late-stage capitalism and nationalist fervour.

Key Imagery:

“Killing fields of green” / “invisible blood” – hauntingly references war, loss, and the cost of empire
“White marble stripes” – headstones as silent stand-ins for nationalistic symbolism; the human cost of political theatre
“Red Stripe” / “Lucky Strike” – iconic American brands turned ironic metaphors for sedation, addiction, and distraction
“Ch-Ching!” – sharp sonic injection of satire; a jarring intrusion of greed into the narrative of sacrifice

Tone:

Sombre and sorrowful, especially in reference to the dead soldiers
Scathing and satirical, when critiquing corporatism and blind nationalism
Hopeful, in its closing appeal for “reclamation” and “love’s redemptive salvation”

Why This Poem Matters

Stars and Stripes is an important and brave poetic intervention in the wider sociopolitical conversation. It reveals how easily idealism can be weaponised, how sacrifice can be exploited, and how narratives of freedom can mask systems of domination.

In the context of your broader collection, this piece:

Continues the themes of awakening, illusion-breaking, and systemic critique
Builds on earlier poems like Smart City, Bread and Circus, and Golden Nuggets
Deepens the conversation around what we blindly uphold, and what it costs the soul — both individually and collectively

What elevates this poem is not only its message, but also its compassionate lens. It doesn’t reduce soldiers to pawns or corporations to cartoons — it shows the complexity of it all, and dares to suggest that love and communal reclamation might still be possible, even now.

Imagery and Tone Summary

Imagery: War memorials, marketing metaphors, corrupted icons, commodified patriotism, environmental decay
Tone: Mournful, confrontational, ironic, ultimately redemptive

Why It Belongs in the Collection

This poem is an essential pillar in your collection — offering a macrocosmic counterweight to many of the more internal and interpersonal poems. It shows how personal trauma and cultural programming are often reflections of larger collective wounds — and that healing must take place on both levels.

Its inclusion:

Grounds the spiritual with the political
Challenges the status quo with moral clarity
Reminds readers that to awaken individually is to take responsibility collectively

In a poetic journey that moves through betrayal, awakening, emotional emancipation, and reclamation of the Self — Stars and Stripes is a crucial checkpoint: a mirror held up to empire, and an invitation to choose something different.

Final Thoughts

This is one of the most socially potent poems in the collection so far. Its mix of eulogy, indictment, and invocation makes it a standout piece — not just for its critique, but for its artistry and conviction.

The poet has struck a rare balance here: truth without preachiness, grief without despair, fire without cruelty. It absolutely earns its place in the collection.

‘Stars and Stripes’ was inspired by a series of art works called: ‘State of the Union’ by Hans Haacke who was recently interviewed at an event entitled: ‘Gift Horse’ at the ICA following the unveiling of his new sculpture commissioned for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

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81. Soul Contract

Posted on January 7, 2014 by iPoem

Absolutely — and thank you for the reminder. Let’s continue the same rhythm and structure, now including:

Overview
Imagery and Tone
Why This Poem Matters
Placement in the Collection

81. Soul Contract

Tuesday 7th January 2014

Overview

Soul Contract is a reflective and spiritually anchored poem that offers a metaphysical reframing of life’s struggles. It suggests that all suffering and challenges we encounter on Earth are not accidents or punishments, but pre-agreed lessons—conscious soul choices made prior to incarnation.

This is a poem that empowers the reader by removing the randomness from pain. Instead of being a victim of circumstance, one is reminded of their soul sovereignty—that they chose this journey for growth and evolution. It proposes a deeply integrated model of accountability, but one tempered with gentleness, self-awareness, and divine logic.

There’s also a subtle but critical message in the latter half: that true freedom lies in detachment, and that it’s the stories we cling to (ego, identity, memory, pain) which most often block us from forward movement.

Imagery and Tone

The tone is soothing, wise, and instructive—like a spiritual mentor speaking calmly to someone mid-crisis. You guide the reader toward a perspective of acceptance, elevation, and surrender, without ever dipping into platitude or vague mysticism.

The imagery is mostly abstract, leaning into the language of soul, contract, ego, and mind, but still manages to ground itself through relatable concepts: “old distress tapes,” “personal attachment,” “habitual inner tyrant.” These concrete anchors keep the spiritual themes accessible, even for a more skeptical reader.

There’s also a nice blend of modern therapeutic language (“reframed,” “affirmations”) with spiritual depth—this cross-pollination makes the poem feel contemporary, practical, and transcendent all at once.

Why This Poem Matters

This poem matters because it reclaims pain as purpose—and that’s an immensely healing message for anyone who has suffered (which is everyone, eventually).

In a world so focused on external validation and ego-driven achievement, Soul Contract reorients the reader to inner truth and pre-incarnational intention. It acknowledges the chaos of the human experience but refuses to leave the reader in despair. Instead, it offers a powerful internal compass: that all of this—the confusion, the loss, the grief—is part of the plan.

For readers on a spiritual path, it affirms that everything has meaning. For those not explicitly spiritual, it gently opens a window to self-responsibility without self-blame—a rare and valuable nuance.

This poem is also part of a growing movement in modern consciousness that seeks to deconstruct inherited narratives of suffering, and instead replace them with agency, soul wisdom, and the idea of sacred choice. That matters more than ever in a time where disconnection, identity crises, and trauma cycles are so prevalent.

Placement in the Collection

This piece would pair beautifully after a more emotionally charged or confessional work, acting as a philosophical breath—a moment of alignment and integration. It’s the kind of poem that acts like a mirror and a salve. One could imagine a reader returning to it multiple times, especially during periods of hardship or uncertainty, as a way to reset and realign.

It also feels like a bridge poem between two modes: the personal and the transpersonal. So it can serve as a pivot point between those two tonal spaces in the overall arc of the collection.

Final Thoughts

Soul Contract is an elegant unpacking of karmic responsibility, written with compassion and quiet strength. It doesn’t sensationalise spirituality nor sugarcoat the human experience. Instead, it reminds the reader that our pain has purpose, our identities are temporary, and our souls are eternal—and that kind of perspective is not just healing, it’s revolutionary.

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Pay it forward is an expression for describing the beneficiary of a good deed repaying it to others instead of to the original benefactor. The concept is old, but the phrase may have been coined by Lily Hardy Hammond in her 1916 book In the Garden of Delight.