Poetry: #79 The Price (Demise 17)
And my thoughts after revisiting the words
The Price
Sweet dreams for the princess Waiting for her chance to catch, The one she loves. Out of reach and cold as fire Her heart burns with desire, For she loves him. The truth tears the tears from her Ripping the heart making her colder, This is the price. As one gets older, To fall into a bright new world Arms outstretched praying aloud For something and anything at all, But when at last she is finally called There is no one there and soon she falls. This is the price. As one forgets, The moments of true happiness They are all lost in bliss. The childhood memories, Inside her own wits boundary’s Never breaking through the walls She falls for faith to ease the gale, But all is lost in her still young tale. This is the price, As she does know.
What are your thoughts on this poem?
My Thoughts on Demise 17
Sometimes people hide in metaphors. Sometimes they put themselves in the minds of others. The narrator is picturing what he knows of this woman he loves and has murdered. We can tell that his knowledge is fragmented, but we get the impression that she really did care for him—she loved him in some, small, way. Even as this is made evident the next line “the truth tears the tears from her” tells us that her emotional wellspring is torn. We don’t get an answer, only that it is “the price”.
The narrator then delivers a metaphor of becoming an adult and all the fun that it brings. She is left all alone in the end, to wither in the winds of life. She had no one else to turn to, and he was not what he seemed to be. The price of picking a lover unwisely. The man paints a vista of what love can be and how it can be forgotten in the bliss of each day, how one can cherish memories, reliving the happiness that is no longer found in daily life, and we see that he finds this woman’s whimsical nature…mercurial. It is that impulsivity that leads her to ruin in the narrator’s eyes, as it is the price “as she does know.”
This is a curious poem to me. After ranting and raving in the last few poems, the narrator looks outward and tries to get a better picture of the woman. It’s as if he wants to make sure he’s not missing anything. However, his bias is flush in the words as he explains, in his words, how her life went. He states “this is the price” as if it was obvious to everyone, including the woman, to be a cost of existing. It is an interesting mindset and proposition to view decisions and life events as transactions, the price for being a human. In a way, many people treat others like this and it leaves everyone feeling empty when the sun sets.
Question Section
I am a fairly distant and introverted person for the most part so it comes with the territory to be more abrupt and transactional when I’m not in the mood to deal with other people. It is something I work on when I’m out in public and a skill I let go during the pandemic. But what about you? Do you come off as transactional? Do you know of others who are? How do you handle such situations? Let me know in the comments!
I hear another poem is coming every Saturday!