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Dramatis Personae
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Mantis God1
SARAH
Welcome to the new world, in front of you is everything (everything)
Cherish it well, reach out and take his hand
Feel his joints clasp around yours
Feel yourselves melting together
This is your meaning, your meaning (your meaning)
Survive and thrive
Inherited fate
Just be glad you’re living now²
Give up what you have
Give it what you’ve got³
Still can’t attain what you need
It’s not enough
It’s gotta hurt³
Think back to your everything (everything)
Face it together
Into the unknown
Spurred by this malignant signal
SARAH & CAIN
The outcome was premeditated, go towards the intended fate⁴
A storm of emotions surrounding the deed
Swallow it whole, don’t forget this aftertaste
Dare to end a life, as it’s been decreed
The outcome was premeditated, produced from the land
Are you shocked and scared or giving yourself to me?⁵
At the climax of this story
SARAH
Leave your life behind, in front of you is your sorrow and slaughter⁶
Take it all in, this broken pastoral scene
Take what’s left of you and go
Feel the love still saved for you⁷
This is your meaning, your meaning (your meaning)
Survive and thrive
Casting your shadow
Through your shame you’re living now
Across the barren earth
Under the same sky
Made to serve as an example
SARAH
CAIN
You still hold close
I still hold close⁸
SARAH & CAIN
Irreplaceable
Undeniable
Who is him but a part of you?
Dare to end your world, as it’s been decreed
The outcome was premeditated, go towards the intended fate
A storm of emotions surrounding the deed
Swallow it whole, don’t forget this aftertaste
Dare to end a life, as it’s been decreed
The outcome premeditated, produced from the land
Are you shocked and scared or giving yourself to me?
At the climax of this story
CAIN
The one thing I didn’t need--a personal bond
Still I’ve found a way to connect it back to me
That parallel with the animal motif…
SARAH & CAIN
The outcome was premeditated, go towards the intended fate
The emotions within are rising up to the surface
Consuming the other half
Dare to end a life, as it’s been decreed
The outcome premeditated, produced from the land
Are you shocked and scared or giving yourself to me?
At the climax of this story
Dare to end your world, as it’s been decreed
The outcome was premeditated, go towards the intended fate
A storm of emotions surrounding the deed
Swallow it whole, don’t forget this aftertaste
Commentary
Of course, in some faraway street corner in the land of, there was a haunt dedicated to discussing and reinterpreting that story. I suppose, in a way, it was like my very own fan club.
As I read the poetry covering the walls and listened in on the conversations, I tried to hang back and observe, yet I ended up roped into the main group of regulars there anyways. It’s my fault for getting too caught up in reading their poetry and having riveting conversations with them. At least they were chill enough to accept “I’m just visiting” as a response when one of the regulars asked for my name.
It was Sarah’s turn to show the group their new poetry that day. I don’t really know how I did it but I joined in. Afterwards they were all happy for me, and I was happy too, but some other part of me recognized the need to get out of there. I took Sarah’s card and headed out the door to his station. The giddy sense of euphoria that enveloped me soon gave way to heartache. It felt like a scratch, the feeling that something got torn up, that it’ll give sooner or later. I sank down into the seat of the bench, and later, into the seat of the train.
Notes
2 “Life!—-Toil! and wherefore should I toil? because
My father could not keep his place in Eden.
What had I done in this?—I was unborn,
I sought not to be born; nor love the state
To which that birth has brought me.” (G. Byron 11)
3 Does this line mean the same thing as the one before it, or do the two lines have different meanings?
4 “The remainder of 4:7 mirrors God's statements to Eve in 3:16 in the LXX as it does in the Hebrew. But an ambiguity arises with the Greek. While the Hebrew makes it clear that Cain must ‘rule over sin,’ the way that the sentence has been split in two in the LX means that Cain is told either’ to you will be its return and you will rule over it’ or ‘to you will be his return and you will rule over him.’” (J. Byron 54) Irenaeus suggests that the he/him version of the line means that the murder was intended to prove Abel as just and Cain as unjust. Ephrem further concludes that Abel will obediently get murdered to mirror Cain being ruled over by sin. (J. Byron 56)
5 I don’t know why, but themes of love were very popular with my fan club. I didn’t really expect it, but it sure was an exciting push of the envelope. When sexual cannibalism occurs in mantises, the female ends up more nourished and the male gets to pass his genes down to more and stronger offspring (PBS). SEE, THE REDBACK SPIDER WOULD WILLINGLY DIE IN MY ARMS (Andrade, 2003).
6 Gilbert
7 Sarah told me he theorized that the mark of Cain was a type of haunting love. I didn’t get it at first, but one of the poems I encountered there was Silvina Ocampo’s “Cain’s Words”, which expresses a similar sentiment of being haunted “with a strange indefinite light of love” (Ocampo, 64). Or it’s what Gregory Orr meant by “consolation” (Tippett).
8 Either they didn’t hear me or they thought I was just doing first person poetry.
9 “That doesn’t sound like the man I knew, it's as if he were two, No one is just one person, you, for example, are both cain and abel” (Saramago, 114). Sarah gave me a bunch of emotive explanations for what that quote means to him, but the only one I really understood was the cannibalism one.
Works Cited
https://poetrysociety.org/poems/a-brief-for-the-defense
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1092790/Inscryption/
https://onbeing.org/programs/gregory-orr-shaping-grief-with-language/