Pompous Piety

[JDRollins]

The demons have sequestered you,

Have tempted you and have won.

Now your souls is empty, alone.

You try to cry out but

None will listen to you preach.

Hatred wells in your belly in anguish

Though you know you've brought this all on

By your very own pompous piety.

 

The searing sermons you used to blaze forth

Now have been quenched in hapless hypocrisy.

The false pity in your eyes does not melt my heart

Because I know the full truth and

Your eyes do so somberly lie.

So go on you righteous, bigoted butler

Keep spouting those loose fitting words that will

Choke you on your own pompous piety.

Edited July 18, 2005 by JDRollins

[Parmenion]

One of the things that stood out for me about this poem and which I must admit I really enjoyed was the alliteration. I am and always have been a fan of using alliteration to drive home points in certain lines and I thought your use of them managed to do just that! Well done on that

 

One of the beautiful tricks of this poem is the "pompous piety" description. At the end of the first stanza, the reader feels that the protagonist has been wronged badly by another character. The fantastic trend during the second stanza and the protagonist's own tirade against this other character finishes quite cleverly with again using the "pompous piety" description, however in this instance, the reader has now switched track believing that the protagonist is in fact the pompous and pious one after the tirade. That element of this poem is simply genius!

 

 

However, there was an elemnt of this poem I didn't much get.

 

"Hatred wells in your belly in anguish"

 

This implies to me that Hatred wells in anguish, or that anguish and hatred have some relationship that I was previously unaware of. Can you explain to me the reasoning behind the use of these words in this expression? Or was there some punctuation that I have missed reading into it?

 

I found this line extremely interesting:

 

"The false pity in your eyes does not melt my heart"

 

I didn't know it was possible to melt a person's heart by pitying them, but this sentence implies just that. If honest pity is a thing that would melt the protagonist's heart wouldn't that make the protagonist of this poem somewhat needy and clingy, unlike the strong hero-type a protagonist is supposed to be?