Pavlov

This is absolutely amazing. It seems that there are two narrators, Pavlov and the slave, and then it is reveled that they are one in the same. He is a slave to himself, or more accurately, a slave to his thoughts and expectations of himself.

I really enjoy your metaphor "spinning words like rouge/silk stories" because it's what I imagine a writer to do, but I've never been able to describe it so beautifully before.

My favorite passage was: "A fictional fate/Love and depression, they go hand in hand/Like the lock in the key/The golden decree/The cure and disease" I've never though of love in this way. It shows great insight into such an emotion and how it can make you view the world.

What I'm getting from this poem is that Pavlov once had a lover and they were his muse. The love was strained at times, not always the answer and often caused him great pain. Then something happened, they either left or died. Without his muse he now struggles to write although he is a writer; it is not what he does but who he is. He is chained to that fact and forces himself to write about nothing, anything. It's a rather tragic tale about being confined in one's mind.

And finally, I love the way you closed off the poem: "(exeunt)". It is a theatrical term, once more reinforcing the fact he is a writer, indicating a group leaving the stage. This is powerful because of the two persons you displayed him as, the tyrannical slave driver who needs the writer to write and the tortured poet who has no motivation but his title as a poet. By using that theatrical term, I get the sense of suicide because the two of them leave the stage, and as all thespians know, the world is your stage.

I don't know if I got the story right or not, but this is what I read from it. It's a wonderful story, and abundant in verisimilitude- I can see such a story being true!