The Second Poem from Jason Ryan Morton’s Book, ‘Diverging Paths’

I will now analyze poem ‘Two’ from Diverging Paths, a book of poetry and prose by my Facebook friend, Jason Ryan Morton, whose work I’ve looked at before. As before, I’ll be setting his poem in italics to distinguish his writing from mine. Here it is:

Words unheard don’t get the attention they deserve, 
The fall of life on a knife, 
A tongue of sword, 
Swerving to hit the closest, 
Human just a demon, 
In godlike form,

And now, for my analysis.

“The fall of life on a knife” isn’t a literal knife, but the knife of verbal abuse, “a tongue of sword.” Now, there are the hurtful words one hears screamed at oneself, then there are the words one tries to say in one’s self-defence. These are “words unheard”; and not being listened to, not being validated, can be just as painful as hearing the hurtful language of an abuser, for they “don’t get the attention they deserve.”

The sword or knife of verbal abuse is most often “swerving to hit the closest,” that is, those people closest to the abuser: family, close friends, co-workers, anyone whose company tends to be taken for granted.

The abuser is publicly perceived to be virtuous, “in godlike form,” but in terms of his or her nastiness, this “human” is “just a demon.” Such is the reality of the false and true selves of a narcissistic abuser.

The commas at the end of every line, especially the last one, suggest the ongoing, unending problem of abuse. It only ends when we break things off and get away. It’s an ending that comes off as abrupt, as if more was expected before the ending, like a sentence ended with a comma instead of a period.