"beware   :   do not read this poem" - Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed (1932-) is an American poet, playwright, novelist, and editor who is best known for his works satirizing American culture. He often tried to represent the perspective of neglected and oppressed African Americans, and the perspective of the neglected in general.

"beware   :   do not read this poem"

tonite   ,   thriller was

abt an old woman   ,   so vain she

surrounded herself w /

    many mirrors

it got so bad that finally she


locked herself indoors & her


whole life became the

    


mirrors

one day the villagers broke


into her house   ,   but she was too


swift for them   .   she disappeared

    


into a mirror

each tenant who bought the house

after that   ,   lost a loved one to


    the old woman in the mirror:


    first a little girl


    then a young woman


    then the young woman / s husband

the hunger of this poem is legendary


it has taken in many victims


back off from this poem


it has drawn in yr feet


back off from this poem


it has drawn in yr legs


back off from this poem


it is a greedy mirror


you are into this poem   .   from

    


the waist down

nobody can hear you can they   ?

this poem has had you up to here


    belch

this poem aint got no manners

you cant call out from this poem

relax now & go w /    this poem

move & roll on to this poem


do not resist this poem


this poem has your eyes


this poem has his head


this poem has his arms


this poem has his fingers


this poem has his fingertips


this poem is the reader & the


reader the poem


statistic   :   the US bureau of missing persons reports  

   that in 1968 over 100,000 people disappeared leaving no solid clues


                         nor trace     only

      a space        in the lives of their friends

This   poem seems to b  a  beast  ,  in it -/ self   . It relies mostly upon the structures of rhyme and stanza, or rather lack of, to portray itself as a primitive and deadly force with which to be reckoned. The first and second stanzas are fractal and broken in nature. The large amount of space between each punctuation mark and the next word breaks up the stanza and forces the reader to pause at each break and consider the idea of loss. In this way it causes uneasiness, mimicking the speech of a primitive beast trying to communicate. It also illustrates the panicked mindset of someone of someone who cannot think cohesively, having to confront the beast. The constant enjambment, in addition to works missing vowels (ex. “abt” for about), further distort the stanza, mimicking the incomplete thoughts a mindless monster would piece together in an attempt to form a full thought. Also, any mention of the mirrors or of anyone absorbed into one is indented. This slight shift represents the surreal and supernatural nature of the mirrors, signaling that total immersion in anything, including poetry, can cause an isolation depriving one’s self of the real world. When the poem does begin to organize lines in a standard fashion, it only issues warnings. The fact that these warnings are issued in relatively solid stanzas with almost no enjambment makes the message more cohesive and therefore stronger and more forceful, as if it has power over the reader. The repetition of multiple lines, such as “back off from this poem” and the alliteration present in the often repeated line “This poem has your [body part]” quicken the pace the reader reads at, increasing the urgency and panic felt. The final stanza form is entirely different from that of the rest of the poem, adding to the discord the poem displays. It names a statistic, mentioning that the disappearing people leave behind “only a space” such as the large pages breaking up the stanza. This mention of spaces relates back to the entire poem, and warns against self absorption as it can be a monster preventing one form participating in the human race, just as the mirrors and the poem suck in people.