Image 1: “Grinning Beast” by Jena Paul – ToonPool
Original Poem: “Never Poke a Rough Beast from the Past” with Prose Commentary
The gates of Hell await the malingerers and the goldbricks. Shunning forward-looking counsel brings all nasty rough beasts to the unwise brain that pokes around in the lots of evil. Better just to move on—quickly!
Introduction with Text of “Never Poke a Rough Beast from the Past”
My original poem, “Never Poke a Rough Beast from the Past,” plays out in four uneven, unrimed versagraphs. Its theme examines the nature of revising the past and discovering new ways of appreciating the present while anticipating a brighter future.
How many times in our lives have we metaphorically “dodged a bullet”? Probably more than we wish to count. It is human nature to do all we can to forget about the painful past, live for a pleasant today, and create a more nearly perfect future.
Sometimes, however, while counting our blessings, we might be reminded of things in our past that we wish we had never done and people we wished we had never met. Of course, as the old platitude goes, “Hindsight is 20/20.” Once we can view the past from a good safe distant in the future, we can breathe a sigh of relief that things were not any worse than they were.
For example, suppose you went through a period of time engaging in a relationship with a truly despicable person, yet at the time you thought that bottom feeder was swell, fun, and even kind. But you were merely blind.
Somehow, by the grace of the Almighty Divine Reality, you managed to escape the clutches of that ghastly, foul-smelling oaf, and then from a good distance you could look back and see what a terribly immoral, wicked, and utterly duplicitous individual that person was.
The advice—aimed solely at the poet’s self—given in this piece comes from an attempt to reconnect with such a mendacious, grotesque individual. After one has forgiven bad behavior, one could possibly desire to renew a friendship with such a person, based simply on some shared interest such as literature, politics, or coin-collecting.
However, if that individual then raised his/her dirty fist against you, you would be of the mind that one should “never poke a rough beast from the past,” or s/he might turn against you and rend you to pieces.
The Motivation to Revisit Old Hurts
Fashioning poems from earlier mistakes possibly makes up a significant number of the confessional contribution of poems to the American literary world. Creating poetry and drama provides the soul room to try its wings as it sizes up the landing field where light prevails.
Never Poke a Rough Beast from the Past
“. . . what rough beast / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” —William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming“
Never poke a rough beast from the past:
Likely, you will find yourself ambling
Among tombstones in the rain
Through a ramshackle garden
From which you fled
So many years ago.
Out of that moldy drizzle, you emerged.
Into healing waves, you progressed.
From a death-star specter, into the life-breathing spirit,
You returned, grateful that the yet Unsensed Force
Had directed your return home,
Where poetry could unfold in joy.
Never poke a rough beast from the past,
Unless you are willing to be singed
By the bile spewing through his forked tongue.
Unleashing his aggressions, he is rabid
To strangle you with his tangled verbiage,
To erase you as he covets your triumphs.
Never poke a rough beast from the past—
The present will secure your future
As you walk in Spirit.
Image 2: Mold Man
Commentary on “Never Poke a Rough Beast from the Past”
Making poetry out of mistakes likely constitutes the bulk of the confessional lot of poetry; examples of that genre are certain pieces by Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Versification and drama offer the soul a place to flutter about as it approaches the landing field of light.
First Versagraph: The Same Snake
Never poke a rough beast from the past:
Likely, you will find yourself ambling
Among tombstones in the rain
Through a ramshackle garden
From which you fled
So many years ago.
You poked. He recoiled . . . and struck. Why? Because he is the same snake you ran from years ago. You could continue but you are not that stupid. You do not want to find your heart and mind scuttling along dead briars on the way to perdition.
Tell the garden to calm its hemlock. Brains in the rain can become smooth. Harbors in the dust can split rocks but think no longer on the “rough beast”—the past is a dead letter.
That snake of lazy desires was jealous of all you possessed. His poverty inducing habits sucked and sniveled, split his brain into puddles of sidewalk chalk in the rain. Amble on. But do not ramble in the shade too long. Move on.
Dot your eyes and cover your tees with the branches of forgiveness. Krishna is blue and you will die on the same branch where His sacred soul moved on to Heaven.
Second Versagraph: Mr. Mold Man
Out of that moldy drizzle, you emerged.
Into healing waves, you progressed.
From a death-star specter, into the life-breathing spirit,
You returned, grateful that the yet Unsensed Force
Had directed your return home,
Where poetry could unfold in joy.
Hell, yes—it is you against him and his cursed memory! Rain is life-giving unless the life it is giving has forgotten itself. Mold is a smell you will remember.
Mold on his jacket, in his hair, in his eyes, covering his ears, moving through his fingers, sliding down his back, entwining his legs with mold—the nearly visible smell of mold.
Why did he smell of mold and somehow I did not notice? No, I did notice, but instead of looking, I just overlooked. Over-smelled, as it were. Yes, he smelled like mold.
One of this bimbos described his smell as like her grandmother’s house—no, dear, unless your granny’s house was full of mold.
Thank you, “Unsensed Force,” for delivering me from that left-behind coast; as I traveled back on the bus, I lucked out not to be arrested for the pot in my purse. A two day trip, stopping at cafés for meals.
Two days without a shower, without a bed, without a word from a loved one! But the sunshine is that I was escaping the mold, the moldy, un-Godly moldy mold?
The joy of leaving a mold-infested, subhuman, snake-like man is enough to brighten my heart any time I happen to think back. Of course, I will soon not need to be thinking back.
You, Mr. Mold Man, are dead to me!
And one day soon after the last cell of my brain has jumped on that thought with both feet, I will leave forever any last thought of the Mold Man, that sucking, sickening mold man.
He will be burning, burning his Mold like a pile of autumn leaves that has a hard time catching fire but once they do, they are gone, gone up in smoke.
Third Versagraph: Verbal Garbage
Never poke a rough beast from the past,
Unless you are willing to be singed
By the bile spewing through his forked tongue.
Unleashing his aggressions, he is rabid
To strangle you with his tangled verbiage,
To erase you as he covets your triumphs.
No one willingly brings on and abides the shifting mental state of the wicked, who promulgate havoc with their very beings. No one endures long the “bile spewing” filthy tongue of the vile, aggressive bloated egomaniac.
No one can miss the danger of being strangled by the grab-bag of putrid tendrils stringing from the faithless brains of the lying liars of the world. They will strike at your heart and mind, as they aim their venom at your soul. Your soul was not made to be singed in the acid of dark hearts, steeped in blackened minds that ramble in the sewers of hell.
They will spike their own adrenalin to spite your creativity, which they pine and supine on the bricks of their jealousy. They are brewing a brain stew—poison-laced and blackguarded.
No one willingly covets erasure at the hands of the devil’s own spawn. No one willingly relinquishes accomplishments and singular triumphs to the rump wind of luciferian subterfuge. Playing—but then praying—in the valleys of despair wipes clean the chalked slate of promiscuity.
The soul will shine—eventually and everlastingly—under the sun of love, trust, hope, and faith—those same qualities that Mold Man mocks and mistrusts as he goes malingering in the darkness and stench of sex-lust and smash-mouthed doggerel.
Fourth Versagraph: Making a Spiritual Effort Now
Never poke a rough beast from the past—
The present will secure your future
As you walk in Spirit.
The future is secure for the one walking in faith. Leaving all rough beasts in the past where they belong, leaving the poking stick to the blazing fires of calmness, leaving all thoughts of rough beasts in the realm of burning might.
Leaving every stick of darkness to the bold fires of heaven, leaving the sinister-minded, brittle-brained Mold Man to his special place in Hades—all that leaving makes you both secure in the way of Zen: “The Way is not the way” means my way is not your way, Mold Man!
What the Mold Man does not know, he will learn after he begins to clean the mold from his fevered mind, clean the mold from his tortured heart, clean the mold from his beleaguered soul.
Let him poke himself to a roused spectacle of disease, where he may become free at last. And for yourself, learn this lesson well: never, never again poke a rough beast from the past.
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