I posted this yesterday both here and on Gotpoetry, and got some interesting responses I’ve been mulling over.

The commenters over at GP couldn’t get it — that the poem is designed to speak to anyone who has ever found themselves agonizing over how much volition they have actually had in the decisions they’ve made, but that the initial inspiration was a meditation on the all too human terror and anguish that Jesus must have felt the night before the Crucifixion. People just didn’t go there, and asked about whether the title was a reference to the three day waiting period after signing a contract on Monday, had I been married on a Thursday, etc.

Then, I read it last night at The Spot during the open before tombstonetcs did his first feature ever (yay, Matt!) and asked for people to speculate on the inspiration for it, and got immediate validation from several poets that it wasn’t that obscure a subject — that the inspiration for the poem was the Passion, and that the title alone started to give it away.

Interesting how different audiences react. Didn’t make me want to change the poem at all, but I was struck by the struggle some people had with it. One thing I considered is that a lot of the GP responses seemed to focus on what I’ll call the “poetry as a hobby/therapy” mindset — that every poem is a direct comment on a specific personal experience, and writing outside of that box is hard to fathom. It’s common at GP where a lot of the poets aren’t doing it (poetry) as consistently or regularly as I do.

Any other thoughts? I don’t think you need to know the backstory to get something from the poem — in fact, that was my intent when I wrote it — but I think it throws an interesting light on it once you do. But am I just being overly confident that you CAN get the backstory from the poem as easily as I think you can? (Obviously, some did, so I know it’s not impossible.)

(By the way — I’m not a Christian at all, so don’t think I’m trying to make some theological point here…a good story is just a good story, and this one’s in so many people’s collective unconscious that I figured it was worth exploring.)

Anyway, here’s the poem again…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thursday

a day comes when
you say it.

you say
“i will.”

you have already said
“what if.”
you have said it
more than once.

this is no longer
the argument
ahead of the contract.
this is the contract,
last words,
finger flung high, grand
illusion shrinking
as you say it
because with those words
the next tasks become
tiny: all the things
you have to do now
granulate and stick
in your gears and you begin
to pick them out so the machine
can begin its inexorable
grind.

so, you do them. you collect
tools. you measure and find
wanting. you add and subtract.
you flip the lenders’ tables.
you open the black door to the black room
and you do not turn away.

as you count and plan, wiping
blood and grit from under your nails,
you ask yourself — dammit,
what if your words did not
place this sand in these works.
and it was there waiting?
what if the will you agreed to follow
wasn’t yours?

who set these things
to work? who made the
struggle? was it truly
your words
that made this happen, or
was it all ready to go
and simply waiting for you
to begin?
wasn’t it a previous contractor who said
the word would be made flesh?

you have recalled this too late.

you find yourself
outside,
staring steadily at the flesh of you
taking another’s words to heart.

now that the contract has been sealed,
even if you could take the words back
you’d still be bound by them. they
were never yours to do with
as you wanted. wanting
has nothing
to do with this.