“Undomesticated’ poem by Gerry Lafemina

 'Undomseticated’ poem by Gerry Lafemina

I request readers to read the poem from the above link and then my review. Thanks.

Two questions have been addressed by the poet. First is how a Nietzschean would look like? The other one is what is being domestic all about?

How a Nietzschean look like? A self affirmative superman as Nietzsche proclaimed? Actually a bobcat is very near to that. The following lines of the poem break loose the myths anyone might carry about being strong and successful:

Rumor has it a bobcat roams the area,

the mauled remains of duck & small game

have decorated the weeds & walking paths.

Fur has been collected. Scat, too.

It stalks quietly, keeps to itself. Good

Nietzschean that it is, it, too, could teach me

about appetite, about patience, about will

to power, about viscera. That noise it makes:

what little difference between a growl & purr.

Does domestication is just an acquiescence initially? Later on it is a habit and in due course the second nature? Whether being domestic and getting wild is contextual? Is there any reversal for domestication or short-lived growling repeats and the conformist’s mask has evolved as his face? Visualization of bobcat answers these.

Bobcat has hunted and left. The leftovers of small animals reveal that. So now it doesn’t matter whether the bobcat must have purred always or growled too occasionally. All that matters is the awe and respect a hunter earns. A family man so domesticated can never get angry. So the poet mentions he ran away from anger. But what could be an undomestication if at all? It could be abruptly leaving the home like Buddha did. But the poet can do that only briefly and then he is back falling in line with the corral? In the first few lines the cats mentioned are too domestic and lazy but the bobcat we see in ending stanza is wild and hunting. Undomestication is a precursor to power and self assertion. But it is never for a long time. It‘s short lived. Something macho for a man who is aware it is transitory. This stanza gives the actual clue for this abstract poem:

I’ve fled from anger, even my own.

The sun like a gong reflected in the pond

vibrating in silence. At water’s edge,

a muck of mud & guano. I’ve come to repent.

What he is repenting has been left to reader’s creative guess.