Poetry: #57 The Hunger (The Search For 5)
And my thoughts after revisiting the words
The Hunger
There is a hunger that drives deeper into the depths of desire desperately digging for somewhere to die. The hunger seeks pain and pleasure and misery. The hunger longs for love and candor and imprinted... No scratch that. There is a hunger that drives into the mind as if it were digging desperately into the depths of the earth looking for death. The hunger longs for pain and pleasure and misery. The hunger seeks love and candor and eternity. The hunger is timeless, it continues through the generations, it is the nature of life. The hunger is perpetually causing cancerous contemplations.
What are your thoughts on this poem?
My Thoughts & Takeaway
“No scratch that.” There’s that phrase again! I think this is the most obvious dichotomy of what I started with, the initial thought that I decided wasn’t good enough, and the revised thought that carries the same structure and concept but is delivered in a different manner. The difference is in the flip of “seeks” and “longs”. This is where I should have written about this poem when I wrote it. Why did I flip these two words? Why did I think “the hunger longs for love and candor…” was not good enough? Why would I want to seek love and candor when I no doubt longed for it? Did I do this to lie to myself?
I think, where the other poems began as something less authentic to what I was thinking and aiming for, this is the reverse. I start with my most authentic version of the opening lines, scratch them, and then rewrite them to obfuscate what I was feeling. Maybe it was for the desire to feel something different than what I did as I wrote; maybe it was just to distance myself from the reader. I am not sure I will know the answer unless we have a way to pull memories out of the head to view in the future.
The last two lines are curious though. “The hunger is timeless” is an ode to the reality that we live in. We as people have a drive, whatever it might be. Sometimes it is not as obvious or potent as the drive of others, but there is a drive; a biological, unconscious drive in us all. That is what I was talking about in this poem more than anything. The drive that makes us act without realizing it. It is not the drive to succeed in business, it is the biological need for whatever our body is craving from food to love to companionship to competition. However, there is a duality to being driven, something people often overlook and it can be a cause for concern. “The hunger is perpetually causing cancerous contemplations” is a line that alludes to the fact not every drive is a good one to have.
Sometimes, we find ourselves driven to do things that are against our want, or against our nature or best interest. It is not always easy to sort the good and the bad hunger. Worse still, how do we know if every hunger we know of is good or bad? How do we know if the hunger we tossed away, thinking it was not in our best interest, was not actually our saving grace? For me, I relate to the lessons of Christianity, as a moral pillar to rely on when I am confused by what I am driven to do. But I am curious, what do you do to ensure you remain on best moral path?
I hear another poem is coming every Saturday!