Originally Posted by grindy (Post 2101057)

Needs more background info to fully enjoy hypocrisy.

Originally Posted by WWWP (Post 2101032)

I've raised 3* kids, a single dad
Most of my years spent alone
I take pride in the success of my children
The closest thing to love that I've known

A passionate soul, heart on his sleeve
A man who prefers more to give
Hidden behind a guarded exterior
Seeking a life meant to live

Originally Posted by WWWP (Post 2101084)

November 11, 2019



Annotated Version



Here the author borrows from 2015's The Revenant - a film chronicling the struggles of a vengeance-filled fur trapper in the late 1820's. The full line, "Life? What life are you talkin' about? I ain't got no life! I just got a living and the only way I get to do that is through these pelts!" Delivered by Tom Hardy, he speaks to the lonely, punishing, and unforgiving frontiersman life, and the author invites the reader to assume comparison between the narrator and such so-called Mountain Men.



Ok lol except we absolutely had a white picket fence

Spoiler for White Picket Fence:

https://i.imgur.com/HbUzFKm.jpg?1

Here our author introduces a victimhood narrative, one we will see emerge repeatedly throughout his collection. He at once separates himself from the violence perpetrated at his hand, and evokes images of a character that is tormented and who has struggled with coming to terms with their past, and so creates a new, more palatable version of an honorable man who fell victim to circumstance.



In an interesting form of revisionist history worthy of a Tarantino trilogy, the narrator speaks of raising three children as a single father, and then conversely speaks of living for years in solitude. Our author is likely unaware of the contradiction, as he seems to be conflating his true personal history with that of the narrator, the hero, the Mountain Man. The narrator may have been a single father, but the author certainly was not. Perhaps we, the audience, are meant to pick up on this virtue signaling untruth - for the deeper we delve the more dishonesty is uncovered. There are pieces of truth: most of the author's years have been spent alone, because once his divorce was finalized he dumped the kids with their grandparents and moved out of state.



So.... not love?



Again the author evokes images of the solitary grizzled Mountain Man, lonely but unloveable. The narrator speaks of regret, insisting he has none - another repeated theme in his works. His misuse of the word fallacy makes the reader question whether he knows that "fallacy" and "lie" are not interchangeable, but I'm sure that there's a deeper meaning there that we the audience are too simple to comprehend. Indeed, wedded bliss is difficult to achieve when you marry your mistress after knowing her for six weeks and break her orbital bone slamming her face into a dresser by week seven.



An incredible use of rhyming structure here, just a beautiful display. If you can't fit two to three overused cliches into your stanza and make them rhyme are you even a poet?



In contrast to the image fostered of a lonely, unloveable Mountain Man with no regrets, our narrator now concedes that he is actually full of passion, with his heart on his sleeve, ready to give his love away - if only it were enough. While the poem begins with Hardy's lament, "I ain't got no life, I just got living," the poem now turns toward the narrator's softness - whereas previously he asserts he does not regret his lonely life, here we are given a glimpse through that "guarded exterior" to see the true existential crisis facing our aging author. Will he find a purpose in this life? Is his life worth living? Time is running out.



It is unclear whether the author intended to flip the opening lines of the poem here its conclusion - "I ain't got no life" becoming "I ain't got life," and "I just got living," now expressed "I just have living," - or whether just like in every other capacity the narrator is simply unreliable and inconsistent.

Originally Posted by MarieMarie (Post 2101088)

this is absolute gold