Missing Beat

  

The betrayal of your lies burns my throat

As I travel down the rabbit-hole I choke

I know the problem's mine, that I can't accept white lies

But I'm struggling with how I'm s'posed to cope

I tend to see the world in black and white

That's why they always say "he MUST be right"

They say I won't admit, when I'm wrong, but they don't get

That False and True refract a different Light

I don't know how to say the way I feel

I think in ways that most don't think is real

I know I'm off the arc of the world's sustaining mark

It's a gaping wound that never wants to heal

If people saw the world the way I do

They'd understand, or they'd be crazy too

There's nothing more frustrating than my not communicating

Just what the world is now supposed to do. 

THE EXPLANATION

I have a policy of not explaining poetry, but there is something going on in this one that overwhelms the subject matter (which fairly obviously starts out after a fight with someone and turns into solipsistic whining on my part; big surprise there). I wrote it quick as can be, and except for maybe the fourth stanza, it doesn't feel rushed or hurried. What fascinated me so much is that in Lines 1, 2 and 4 of each stanza there clearly (to me) is a beat missing where there are no words.  I don't know how to explain it. I mean, why aren't there just three beats in each line?  I don't know.  I can't give you the answer. I just KNOW there are four, and I (for some reason) did not fill the fourth one with words. In some ways the poem almost reads like an Emo Limerick (at least in structure), but it doesn't sound that way at all.  I wish I could record myself reading it so you could hear it, but maybe it will come across that way to you, too. Lines 1, 2 and 4 are all like da-Da-da-da   da-Da-da-da   da-Da-da MISSING BEAT. In fact, you could even argue it's missing a beat at a quarter!  Now, Line 3 in each stanza has the four beats, though they read differently: da-Da-da-da-da-da-da   da-da-Da-da-da-da-da-da, and then back to Line 4, which reads like 1 and 2.  I don't know why this is, and I don't why I can "hear" the silence, even if there weren't any words there, and I don't know why it fascinates me way more than the poem's words itself, but perhaps in a way this obsession with the Missing Beat of the meter explains what I was trying to say better than the poem ever could. Selah.

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