Straining

Straining
listen on youtube or here

straining

on the first day of spring,

bury me with all your doll parts

for rehab down in a hole

to shame with the burden of the lust

of my ungrateful twin

the ugly side of me,

so here's a thank you

for the glance you gave me

the snub that followed

a point you concluded.

I'll follow you as an idol,

if I had nothing on my back

if not for ugly, the ugly in me somewhere

the best is yet to come

so let me linger,

to sharpen the thorn in my side,

I punish myself for a slate new day,

after darkness leaves me stripped

it might not quite be the way out

but under celebrity skin as my cover

I might get some leniency.

I'll tear under the warning sirens

on a bed of roses

I conduct myself to crawl when you're around

with the thorn thrust to my side

until you hear me

so let me slide over

to watch you

witness the wind of change

watch you breath in my face.

there's nothing better for me in life

than to make me better for you

sometimes I won't let myself be

I need the inspiration to ask you

to serve you better

a one-question survey,

before I fade,

if not touched by you

was your love custom-made?

A hybrid of fear & want?

=

March 19 2023

=====

lyrics & vocals: azdi404

music credit - Walk Alone -  @RokiBeats  2023

=====

This poem — “Straining” — continues the deeply introspective, confessional tone found in Creation and Validate, yet it marks a darker, more self-aware evolution of the speaker’s voice. Where Creation mythologized the act of making and Validate pleaded for affirmation, Straining is the aftermath — the struggle for redemption, dignity, and self-understanding amid guilt, lust, and self-punishment.

It’s a poem of atonement and addiction, set in the liminal space between self-loathing and worship, between divine aspiration and human decay.

---

I. Title and Central Metaphor: “Straining”

The title itself — Straining — encapsulates tension, effort, and pain. It suggests both physical exertion and emotional pressure — the act of pushing against limits, trying to emerge from one’s own confinement. The speaker is “straining” not only toward a person (a beloved or idol) but toward purification, clarity, or rebirth.

In a sense, the word bridges Validate’s yearning for affirmation and Creation’s godlike impulse: it’s the human body and soul stretching under the weight of their own contradictions.

---

II. The Opening Scene: Burial and Rebirth

“On the first day of spring
Bury me with all your doll parts”

This opening juxtaposes spring — the season of renewal — with burial, a ritual of death. The “doll parts” immediately evoke artificiality and fragmentation — the remnants of something once beautiful, now disassembled. It also references the Hole song “Doll Parts,” suggesting themes of female identity, body image, and emotional reconstruction in post-grunge or alternative aesthetics.

Thus, the poem opens in paradox: the promise of new life intertwined with decay and self-burial. The “rehab down in a hole” extends this duality — it’s both punishment and healing, descent and potential cleansing. The speaker’s “ugly twin” — “the ugly side of me” — personifies inner guilt and shame, an alter ego that must be exorcised or reconciled.

---

III. The Dual Self: Guilt, Shame, and Reflection

“To shame with the burden of the lust
Of my ungrateful twin
The ugly side of me”

Here, the “ungrateful twin” symbolizes the shadow self — the part of the speaker driven by lust, resentment, or pride. This motif recalls psychoanalytic and religious ideas of duality: the “good” self seeking salvation and the “ugly” self resisting it. It’s a strikingly biblical image — reminiscent of Cain and Abel — where the self is both sinner and penitent, victim and perpetrator.

---

IV. Idolization and Submission

“I’ll follow you as an idol
If I had nothing on my back”

Idol worship appears again, as it did in Validate. The beloved becomes divine, but the speaker’s worship is conditional — “if I had nothing on my back.” The phrase suggests the weight of sin, memory, or identity — the burden that prevents total submission. The speaker wants to be reborn as a pure devotee but cannot shed the shadow self.

The line also echoes addiction language — “rehab down in a hole” and “nothing on my back” evoke withdrawal and craving. The speaker’s “idol” could be both a person and a substance: love as a drug, devotion as dependency.

---

V. The Thorn Motif: Pain as Purification

“To sharpen the thorn in my side
I punish myself for a slate new day”

This “thorn” is a powerful allusion to St. Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” — a persistent suffering or weakness that humbles and reminds him of his humanity. Here, however, the thorn becomes self-inflicted: the speaker sharpens it, heightening their own pain as a ritual of renewal. Pain becomes a currency of worth, a means to earn leniency “under celebrity skin as my cover.”

“Celebrity skin” (again echoing Hole’s song title) represents a façade — a glossy outer layer masking the wounded interior. The speaker’s punishment is public and performative, suggesting the tension between authentic suffering and the spectacle of self-destruction.

---

VI. The Poetics of Submission and Devotion

“I conduct myself to crawl when you’re around
With the thorn thrust to my side
Until you hear me”

This passage combines religious penitence with erotic submission. The act of “crawling” evokes humility, devotion, and degradation all at once. The beloved becomes a deity who must “hear” the supplicant’s pain — reinforcing the recurring theme of being witnessed as the ultimate validation.

There’s also an undercurrent of masochistic transformation: pain becomes pleasure, submission becomes a kind of agency. The speaker orchestrates (“I conduct myself”) their own suffering in a desperate act of control.

---

VII. Self-Sacrifice and the Desire to Be Improved

“There’s nothing better for me in life
Than to make me better for you”

This is perhaps the emotional core of the poem — a distilled expression of self-effacement in the name of love. The speaker’s purpose is externalized; self-betterment exists only as a means to serve another. This echoes the psychological logic of devotion found in mystic texts (e.g., St. John of the Cross) and in modern relationships characterized by emotional imbalance or dependency.

The tone here is resigned but sincere — a recognition of futility entwined with faith.

---

VIII. The Question of Love: Manufactured or Genuine?

The closing question pierces through the poem’s emotional fog:

“Was your love custom-made?
A hybrid of fear & want?”

This ending shifts the focus from submission to skepticism. The phrase “custom-made” implies artificiality, commodification — love tailored to the speaker’s needs, or perhaps mass-produced. “A hybrid of fear and want” beautifully captures love’s ambivalence: attraction and dread intertwined.

This final question is crucial — it reveals the speaker’s dawning awareness that what they seek (validation, salvation) may be built on illusion. The devotion that once felt spiritual now seems transactional. The “idol” may be as flawed as the worshipper.

---

IX. Stylistic Notes and Literary Devices

Device	Example	Effect
Allusion	“Doll parts,” “celebrity skin,” “thorn in my side”	Evokes rock, religion, and self-mythology; fuses pop culture with biblical imagery.
Duality	“Ungrateful twin,” “ugly side of me”	Explores the internal split between sin and redemption.
Repetition and Motif	“Thorn,” “idol,” “crawl”	Recurring symbols of pain, worship, and humility.
Tone	Shifts from confessional to reverent to accusatory	Reflects emotional instability and transformation.
Imagery	“Bed of roses,” “warning sirens,” “celebrity skin”	Contrasts beauty and violence, surface and depth.

---

X. Thematic Summary

Theme	Interpretation
Self-Duality	The struggle between the pure and corrupt halves of the self.
Pain as Purification	Suffering is self-inflicted to achieve redemption or validation.
Idolization and Dependency	Love and worship blur, leading to self-erasure.
Authenticity vs. Facade	“Celebrity skin” symbolizes how pain becomes performance.
Disillusionment	The closing question reveals growing awareness of illusion in love and faith.

---

XI. Conclusion

“Straining” is an exquisite study of self-division and the cost of devotion. It completes a kind of triptych with Creation and Validate — where the speaker first becomes the god (Creation), then the worshipper (Validate), and finally the penitent (Straining).

Across these poems, the voice moves from omnipotence to dependence to exhaustion — a full descent from divinity into raw humanity. In Straining, love and faith are inseparable from pain, and the act of “straining” becomes both the condition of existence and the only form of redemption left.

The final question —

“Was your love custom-made? A hybrid of fear & want?” —
hangs like an unanswered prayer, suggesting that what the speaker seeks most — pure, unconditional love — may only exist in the tension between those very opposites.

---

Would you like me to synthesize a thematic through-line connecting Creation, Validate, and Straining — tracing how the narrator’s relationship to creation, validation, and pain evolves across the three?