These poems proclaim a life of stress and really painful relationships, often ones which really do feel like a matter of life and death, and force the sufferer to contemplate the boundaries of mortality. I see that Marc had some desire to be a rock star, and was obviously drawn to some of the rock-scene’s self-destructive mentality. A poem such as I am Devil evokes the Rolling Stones’ plea for sympathy with the same, quoted at the outset. The reader has to think carefully as to whether or not the utterances in his collection were drug-induced. I know one writer who had severe addiction problems but who writes with exceptional lucidity.
Marc’s partner (or conflation of partners) embraces qualities of the idealised ‘eternal feminine’, someone callous and unfeeling, someone deeply affectionate, someone with a passion involving intense strife and anger: “Love and hate all the same; they’re painted black”. He does not put them into distinct categories, but merges them in a most thought-provoking manner. In terms of contemplation, the out-of-reach icon, the fleeting acquaintance, the close partner whom one has to leave but to whom one remains deeply attached, could be one and the same person.
Relationships seem to come and go, often leaving indelible, painful memories which seem to defy eradication; there is sometimes a need for ‘a liquid insanity to numb the mind’. Some of the time, his partner seems determined to wipe their relationship ‘off the slate’: ‘words washed away/flushed away . . .So does this mean your conscience is clear?” Sometimes he feels his partner could get totally dehumanised: “I remember those eyes/replaced by mirrors/Reflecting the lies/of an undignified horror.”
Marc is exceptionally incisive with his use of the imagery of contradiction: “So tear me at the seams/And pour me out until I’m whole again . . . an ice blue fire will burn inside me . . . the starting pistol signalled the end.” This exploration is carried to one extreme in King of Nothing – where he gets a sense of eternal omnipotence from his own destruction. The issue is faced with full intensity in The Argument: “And so we built barriers/this was our strength/this would be our saviour . . . Pull the trigger/that empties a chamber of emotion/Aimed straight at the chest/our bullets filled with devotion.” He can indeed feel like ‘heaven in a cage with a hint of hell’. He sometimes feels he could take complete possession of his partner’s mind, assume his partner’s persona: “Behind your eyes/I can still see through/Behind those eyes/I’m still in you.” Marc pursues this obsessive theme further in Envy: “Your lives are under the microscope/Until I find the particle that makes you better than me./I will become you/I will live in your skin.” “When you reach out/I just sink deeper in, the wrong side of right/laying on the wrong side of life.” Home is ‘where all creation becomes destruction’.
He even has reservations about writing as a means of solace for a tortured soul: “I’m sat at this desk with no real meaning/I’m too close to the edge and the end of me.” But some faith remains: “I wrote this life in pencil/so I could make a change.” He writes both literally and figuratively.
Their love could be truly eternal: “We’ll make it on our gravestone/We’ll wrap it up in sin.” Reincarnation can be transformative: “If you were buried in a pit of faeces/You’d come back to life smelling of roses”. He certainly feels his godly potential:”I am more than nothing, for I am everything. I am no longer a man.”
Are all relationships ultimately selfish and solipsistic: “This is how man chose to use free will/by abolishing another man’s will.”
He dwells on his own vulnerability, but allows for that quality in his partner/s: “You are the window that breaks.”
He tends towards pessimism, but there is sometimes light in the tunnel. He settles for a cynical compromise: “I have to settle for what I am, nothing more than a self-hater”. He is terrified by all the courses of action which face him: “I’m scared of becoming something I can’t bear to be . . . But scared also of being restricted to normality . . . I am a danger if I take you with me . . . I’m scared of your escape/You can’t ever leave me. I’m scared that if I told you those things/Then you would see these dreams would come true.
Justice stands out as an item separate from the other poems in this collection. It concerns someone being imprisoned for manslaughter having acted in self-defence against two violent assailants. The Jokers Wild is equally powerful, touching on urban unrest and terrorism. The world of politics is a macrocosm of their relationship.
With its sense of fractured logic, of irrationality, this collection is utterly honest as a portrayal of someone with a deep personal identity crises, articulating all the hesitations and indecisions which ...