AOW #22

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPTmsoZYkXI

This spoken word poem was written and performed by Rudy Francisco.  The poem is about his ex-girlfriend and essentially their strained, destroyed relationship.  Rudy shows his confliction through this poem by saying that he hates her and he loves her one after another.  Rudy uses an extremely wide range of rhetorical elements.  He uses metaphors, similes, puns, hyperbole, personification, allusion, digression, and even anaphora.  His metaphors and simile put his state of heartbreak and nostalgia into a new, presentable, light.  Heartbreak isn't anything no one hasn't already heard of before, but through his "gas chamber" and "hour glass" metaphors, he makes heartbreak sound freshly cruel and destructive as if we are hearing about it for the first time.  Rudy also describes his pride as "clawing out of his mouth" which gives Pride the persona of a self-minded demon.  His repeated "if I could" and "you wanna know how I got these scars" statements keep bringing the poem back to where it started, in order to remind everyone what the purpose of the poem is. Rudy also alludes to Jesus dying on a cross, wars and white flags, even the Holocaust.  By doing so, he expands the poem's potential and empowers it.  Perhaps most impressive of all is his presentation.  Rudy was not restrained at all.  He was passionate, natural as if he had just been heartbroken right then and there.  I could even see spit coming out of his mouth, which showed me that he was lost in his emotions with no consideration for what his audience might think.

As a poet, I'd say his purpose would first be to relieve himself of his inner thoughts.  Otherwise, he might implode.  I would argue that if he were a real poet, everything that he writes is first for himself; everything else is secondary.  This is a piece driven by emotion/pathos so there may be little acknowledgment of an audience.  After all, heartbreak has no time for debates.  It's just a time for coping and venting.  Poetry such as this, has little room for reconstruction.  Most likely how it falls and how it spills onto paper is how it should be.  For him to go back and logically/technically arrange the pieces of the poem would only show insincerity and betrayal of his own self.