Memories of the Marxist

[sleepingsun1]

I’m exhausted with it, a world of capitalist
Symbols and etchings on God, with papers putting
My life on hold, whether etched in questions
On Chaucer, or in the face of the monarch
Upon the pound note.

Making serene relations scream
My family is split by it, would you believe it now
Betrayed by those dear doting eyes
To dire fatalism to kill that classical emotion
A romantic memory that some call ‘love’.

So it was, I walked through to you
In the town, through the night
The pavement pale in death, the moon
Shadowy and spectre like reflecting
The chill of the mist, white and blinding.

I found it, a distraction, your words
As the birds beautifully singing in the dawn
Of the next day, we counsel and console each other
In simplicity, your young sagacity, my melancholy
Merging and moulding in our words.

We became Hegel’s absolute.
Contradiction in conception, ignorant intimacy
Different yet the same, we cancelled, yet synthesised
You whispered there would be superiority in it
And I laughed, about how a Geist had only effected Europe.

Yet it came, it came
When voices became one, and from a coffee room
We ripped and raged against the societal structure
The trappings of tradition that had, like a soldier in kaki
Shot my inspiration in silence.

The walls fell down in my mind, commercialism
Dead with a comet, you hurtled in to it
‘Coffee?’ I asked, ‘No to convention’ a reply,
‘Hot chocolate to sweeten appetite
To consume the putrid patriarchies of society’.

Every action was a revolution from you
Expressed explicitly something contradicting or convening
And I, inspired, hung on hopefully to your words
To see if new fruit would come
From the long dead trees of libertarian America.

But no blossom came.

I remember your voice still
Those birds calling in the morning, shrill
Singing, and hear the Marxist mantras fill
My head once again, as I, in conformity
Leave the coffee shop we met in, after curiously
Knocking on the walls that are still there.

[ladymaybebaby]

Wow! This is a wonderful piece... I love the tone and the way the speaker tells this story is excellent, I was hooked from the very start! Much enjoyed and very, very nicely done! Thank you for sharing your work with us!

-LMB
xoxo

[ladylilith]

I love this. I knew I would, the title grabbed me, I'm dabbling with some theories of Marxism at college a tthe moment, but yeah, I thought you wove this so well. Each outside influence, or reference, was well placed and relevant and ah! I thought there was so much I could pick out and explore further.

I particularly like this part:

'We became Hegel’s absolute.
Contradiction in conception, ignorant intimacy
Different yet the same, we cancelled, yet synthesised
You whispered there would be superiority in it
And I laughed, about how a Geist had only effected Europe.'

Intelligent, articulate poetry. Tres cool.

Lily^^

[everhopeful]

You have a very effective and engaging narrative poem and solid development of an extended metaphor. The inspiration of someone rallying against capitalism is a nice introduction to the poem, and while you stuck to the theme I also saw that there was a lot more going on than someone merely considering politics. The satirical side of this is subtle and plays a part between the lines.
Well penned.

[robema1]

Its beautifully itching upon what we nearly forgot about marxism being human, not politically abused.

Cheers Rob

[jwesley]

To borrow LMB's words, "Wow! This is a wonderful piece... " I agree, I was captured in the first stanza and couldn't quit till the end. Again ... wonderful write, my friend.

j.

[songofmeadow]

A poem well worth reading again and studying, I can see it is very well written/structured and congratulate you on the spotlight accolade, mx

[Dew]

Congrats on the spotlight!!! An intriguing write! Go apocalypse! - dew

[JASON]

khaki, sleeping sun -come on man 2 thumbs up for a great write.
maybe with a few more spotlight accolades you could make a complete line??

[sleepingsun1]

khaki, sleeping sun -come on man 2 thumbs up for a great write.
maybe with a few more spotlight accolades you could make a complete line??

Oops on the spelling mistake.

Have you read the poetry of Ted Hughes? I'm pretty sure he was world famous and poet laurette and didn't really complete lines that much. Postmodernism doesn't have to use a classical structure. :)

[ladymaybebaby]

I was the first to comment and fall in love with it, and I just see in the last comment someone is comparing your work to Ted Hughes... Sylvia Plath's husband, pretty heady stuff! This is a great piece so I wanted to stop back in and offer up my congratulations on a well deserved spotlight pick for this week!

-LMB
xoxo

[sleepingsun1]

I was the first to comment and fall in love with it, and I just see in the last comment someone is comparing your work to Ted Hughes... Sylvia Plath's husband, pretty heady stuff! This is a great piece so I wanted to stop back in and offer up my congratulations on a well deserved spotlight pick for this week!

-LMB
xoxo

Hahaha oops! No no that was me saying about structure and none end stop lines to the comment above (this is the writer of the poem) It would be nice to be compared to Hughes/Plath though, very nice! :)

[dornicks]

A very striking piece in theme and composition giving much to ponder on. A deserving choice to be Spotlighted.

dornicks

[everhopeful]

I hate to start by commenting a comment, but I'm guessing that Jason might have meant you completed a line in your signature with spotlight awards, rather than anything about your poem?
Anyhoo, I enjoyed the opportunity to re-read this one, you have a style of poetry which certainly fits with the postmodernism you referenced, yet there's a hard-hitting focus to it which I often associate with more classical poets. And while I know you also referenced Ted Hughes yourself, there's something about this which puts me in mind of him, and that's not a bad benchmark to reach!
Congratulations on the spotlight.

[Larsen M. Callirhoe]

This piece is certainly well written and you seem to have an affluent and natural command of the English language and I don't see many writers who command the English language or any language all to well as it is thought to be and I read a lot of stuff, so please take that as an ultimate compliment. With out getting to political this line you wrote might speak volumes on your own personal mystique and you wrote:

Singing, and hear the Marxist mantras fill
My head once again,

Didn't Marxist philosophy lead to problems in Russia. These mantras certainly lead Hitler to some different perspectives that lead to WWII... From what I take in the United States we are barking up the tree that China has climbed and I know many people in the world disagree with the Nation of China politically or apolitical even if they don't realize it. I really don't know if I have a true opinion on this piece because I understand the ramifications of such a line as you wrote:

"To see if new fruit would come
From the long dead trees of libertarian America.

But no blossom came. "

Since America has been a Republic since its inception this nation holds democratic elections to vote people into office that run this country like a Republic and my definition of a republic is that a small amount of elected officials voted into office by democratic election run the government of the country for the people. I really think that the Libertarian movement in the United States is not a large part of the populace of the United States. It would be nice if we all could live the Libertarians views or outlook on/ of the world, but most people realize and even libertarians have to understand without some laws crimes like rape and murder and theft would be more common place and prevalent. Without laws of capital punishment for such offenses committed in a free society crime would run rampant or that is my understanding of how life is for the time being.

I disagree with Marxism because it believes in the ideals that people should be controlled. I take this piece in good jest though because who knows how the world will look at such views in a hundred years. I mean several really good inventions could make the world a utopia for example like an antibiotic that kills all sexually transmitted diseases, a power source that gives electricity to the world plentifully without polluting the environment or the fuel source to make such a thing become exhausted, or a filtering system that cleans polluted and violated water without to much of a hassle could really change the landscape of the planet. What alarms those in control the most though is the draining of earth's resources at an alarming pace and whether people see it coming or not soon people will not be able to be as materialistic as they were raised because government will ration supplies and this will cause clashes with the populace? If I can see things like this without premonitions I don't know why more people don't see these things coming. But the again knowledge is a powerful resource and to not use it is a tragedy in its own right. Enjoyed nevertheless and congrats on the past spotlight....


victor

[sleepingsun1]

Victor:
The poem is myself meeting an ex lover of mine who was a Marxist. My own political views aren’t made very explicit in this poem. I don’t think an ideology led to the problems in Russia. I believe that an ideological shift from what can be considered still a bourgeois revolution ala Lenin, being overthrown by Stalin, a fascist, led to the problems in Russia. If you can give me one point of similarity between the aphorism ‘Workers of the world unite’ and the Stalinist State, a serious ideological link, then I will concede. There was still a fascist military command, still a man in charge who stifled the opinions of others. The Cold War was not an ideological dispute between libertarianism and communism, but between a capitalist empire and one which attempted to be without Capital in a capitalist world, which in my world is quite difficult.
As for America’s ‘democracy’ you must know the electoral college has more power than the ordinary voter. If you think that representative democracy in that framework is true democracy I don’t think we can move the point. Libertarian America was emphasised because of it’s obsession with capital, and also libertarian in American terms is very different from the ideology of libertarianism, which is about individual liberty and a very small, minute ‘night watchman’ State. Libertarianism does not necessarily lead to democracy, either, if one reads Berlin’s famous paper on the two types of liberty that can be seen.
Marxism does not necessarily have to lead to the control of people. No neo-Marxists really would like to express the idea of the dictatorship of the protalateriat, that was peculiar to Marx himself due to his view on material historical determinism.
As for my own personal views on Marxism, I don’t ever believe a revolution in the Marxist sense is possible. Power is not a one relational thing from one class to another, nor do I except full blooded Marxist material power relations due to my views on gender expressivism. Power permeates everywhere, and therefore no revolution is necessarily ever possible, power can be used for good or ill, but Marx was rather naïve to believe that it could be abolished by material change, it’s not material in and of itself.
The end of the poem is intended as an allusion and irony of this point. The coffee shop we met in is still there. It had the power to bring us together, to change my thoughts, and yet the reality of it, that power model, whether material or otherwise, still stands.