The Neophyte

Here is the poem I mentioned in the previous post, the one inspired by the music I was listening to the night I first started writing it. After many edits and revisions, I think I've finally got it. The most recent version is the one you see below. I tried to incorporate the use of more concrete images to give the words a life and personality all their own. Hopefully, I accomplished that. 

That's where you come in, dear reader. 

If you're feeling up to it, I'd love to know what you think. Be as constructively critical as you want to be, as I'm thinking of submitting it to a student publication at my college by the end of this month. And now, without further ado...

“The Neophyte”

He thought himself a neophyte intellectual who lacked

The prerequisite pretension

Strumming his fingers through mental chords

Striking up a match,

Shaking jolts through dormant lords,

Inciting the vocal

Fuel of a generation

He played them all with his charisma,

Leaving them breathless,

Leaving them blinded,

Rapt by the rampant drumming and

Wondering after the true charlatan

He struck up a conversation

Summoning up his charm,

His weapon his gentle persuasion

As he blithely blew his game plans

Into the seamless curve of Gale’s ear,

Knowing full well that she’d leave him

Winded, shooting the breeze about

His wounds

Sunk beneath his psyche

She was half-tempted to grab the spade,

Twice-enticed to forge her verbal blade,

Deciding at last to pick up the scalpel

And knit her way through the fibers

Cloaking his core

Unwinding, testing out the theory of

How long until he cracks

And shows her she’s more

Than just a constellation in his rose-tinged sky

But she refrains, restrains

Chooses to smile and feign indifference

To his mad scheming

As her analytical wits crackle with

The spark that started it all,

The spoken verse that struck a chord

And cursed her with the scalding imprint of

His asymmetrical smile

Burned somewhere in the folds of her brain

And all she can think to say was DAMN IT.