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:

25. Easter Sunday

Posted on April 24, 2000 by iPoem

**Review of Easter Sunday (Monday 24th April 2000)**

Easter Sunday departs from the overtly metaphysical or spiritually visionary tone found in much of the poet’s earlier work, offering instead a raw, candid introspection grounded in the immediacy of personal experience. It is a poem of inner negotiation — between productivity and presence, guilt and permission, ambition and love — framed by the disarming ordinariness of a grey bank holiday.

Opening with the mundane yet sensory-rich line, “Today is a typically British bank holiday / Wet and grey,” the poet sets a scene rooted firmly in the everyday. Yet this grounded beginning quickly shifts into something more nuanced, as the mention of thunder becomes a metaphorical rupture: “the sheer power of nature’s noise / Infiltrating our little worlds for a moment.” Here, as so often in the poet’s work, nature offers not only backdrop but intervention — a reminder of larger forces interrupting the small cycles of human preoccupation.

What follows is a stream-of-consciousness reflection on time, identity, ambition, and relational compromise. The poet’s use of quotation marks around “the boyfriend” subtly implies emotional distance or ambivalence — a quiet signal that this relationship is perhaps one of both comfort and constraint. The day, intended for personal tasks and regeneration, has been surrendered instead to “sex and lounging,” an admission that is at once humorous, honest, and laced with frustration.

There is a deep self-awareness running through the poem — “I’m so hard on myself / Most of the time and I don’t even realise it” — that invites the reader into the poet’s internal dialogue. This moment of self-observation reveals the poem’s central tension: the struggle between the soul’s striving toward an idealised version of self (productive, empowered, spiritually aligned) and the messy, necessary humanity of simply being — lazy, in love, distracted, present.

Stylistically, the poem adopts a conversational and diaristic tone, bordering on prose but always governed by a poetic cadence and internal rhythm. There is little traditional punctuation, allowing thoughts to flow organically and unfiltered — echoing the emotional current of the piece. This structure mirrors the internal monologue of someone caught in the act of self-reckoning, where insight arises not in neat stanzas but in recursive loops of realisation and release.

One of the poem’s strengths lies in its unflinching honesty — particularly in articulating the subconscious resentment that arises when external relationships are perceived as obstacles to inner progress: “I start resenting the source of sabotage ie: The boyfriend.” This is not accusation but confession, offered without artifice. It is followed immediately by self-soothing, maturity, and the compassionate reminder: “But it’s OK / I can be patient with myself.” These cycles of critique and comfort speak to a level of psychological insight and emotional vulnerability that feels both grounded and generous.

The poem culminates in a quiet act of defiance against internalised capitalism and perfectionism — “Tell my inner-tyrant / To shut-the-f**k-up” — and then shifts into gratitude. The poet gives themselves “permission / To chill,” embracing a hard-won self-compassion. This shift is not without its spiritual underpinning; forgiveness, patience, and trust in divine timing are embedded in the closing lines, which circle back to the sacredness of rest, love, and appreciation — even on a “rainy Sunday afternoon.”

In conclusion, Easter Sunday is a refreshingly grounded entry in the poet’s body of work. It explores the everyday struggles of self-discipline, relationship, and purpose with clarity and honesty, ultimately finding peace not through transcendence, but through self-forgiveness. The poem’s greatest strength lies in its emotional transparency and relatability — a gentle reminder that spiritual practice sometimes looks like doing nothing at all, and that grace can be found in the simplest of Sundays.