poem breakdown: Sisyphus and his Boulder

adding context and my understanding of my poem Sisyphus and his boulder, my favourite love poem. Happy Valentine's day.

the poem itself

In love with her or the idea herself,
Memories occur, applied, left on her shelf. 
Messed on my word, lied, rest on her shoulder. 
Westward, beside, lest our flame smoulder. 

My heart a furnishing, 
Out in the rain burnishing, 
Wear and tear, tarnishing. 
Garnishing the muscle with lonely varnish. 

Homely, a bustle of mostly, 
Ghostly, grossly inadequate, 
Chest-plate deflate, conflate. 
Create to abate the weight. 

See, fate is a seductive poison: 
States a destructive idea, delivered by blow gun. 
Sinks into your brain, 
Sprays it’s obstructive rain, 
Leaving a counterproductive stain. 

I need to let myself fall, 
Not too much, not too little. 
Allow it to sprawl, 
Not too Dutch, not too brittle. 

A pendulum swinging between extremes, 
A speculum in a wound to help vultures preen between the seams. 
A gentle hum, as I drift down the streams of dreams, 
Some that were, others that are, and some that are yet to become even schemes.

Can’t sit down and settle, 
Rather split hairs, drown in metal. 
Need to hit town and regain mettle, 
My mind screaming, a boiling tea kettle. 

The sound builds, unable to stay still, 
Bound by wills, the sound: unstable, shrill. 
Fear bolsters a sense of queer, still, 
The sound wound round your neck, 
A cable noose of your own wreck. 

I open my eyes, still resting on your shoulder, 
Never did I consider that flame would smoulder, 
Spark it with a kiss, my dame, Sisyphus and his boulder.
Love: an endless task, tinnitus from the sound, 
Meaningful nonetheless, perpetual bask. 
Bound by our task, 
Our struggle with the vast. 
Unending love, 
Both of us bending to fit the glove. 

context breakdown

This poem is pretty epic and one of my favourites. However it is also one of my more dense and less straight forward poems. Let me break it down for you and give you my reading of it. Obviously art, and the meaning behind it, is extremely subjective. My reading of it is mine, and it is not the reading of it nor is it any more or less correct than your own. However, I’m always curious about what authors and poets meant by certain lines or even the poem itself, so I’ll break it down stanza by stanza for you.

first stanza

This first stanza, like most if not all, sets out the tone, the themes and the rhyme schemes of the poem. That latter part is honestly my favourite part of this poem, the idea that you can have a stanza where every meaningful word is used as part of a rhyme scheme. When I manage to pull that off, I am super proud of myself. The last three lines of this first stanza really pull this off to the best of my (current) ability. If you want to speficially understand what I mean I’ll show you:

This kind of internal rhyme scheme is picked up, and dropped, a fair bit through out this poem to keep it interesting and fresh. As well in a spoken word performance, I do the same thing with the tempo and flow. These are things I learnt from my rap/hiphop influence, shout out to MF DOOM, may he rest in peace.

Now for the seeds of ideas planted in this stanza. The first line is questioning the nature of the love I am in, quite litterally asking if I am in love with her or the idea of her.

In the second line I am talking about how we are making memories of firsts that will be associtaed with her for the foreseeable future. Something that inevitably happens with a relationship, certain songs, movies, TV shows, meals, etc will have some association to a person that you exprienced them with for the first time, or if you made a tradition out of it.

The third line alludes to a mistake I made, introducing some kind of dishonesty in the relationship. But then resting on her shoulder implying that we made amends, which is then confirmed by the final line. Moving Westward, connecting the idea of American settlers moving Westward, manifesting destiny with her at my side, not allowing the flame of love to smoulder and fail.