“The Dead Flag Blues”

Efrim Menuck’s “The Dead Flag Blues” is an orchestral, brooding, atmospheric piece set in the future after certain fantastic cataclysms that were not mentioned. The poem is set during the second-century Roman siege of Jerusalem. The poem’s text was taken from an “incomplete movie about prison.” Menuck chose to compose the poem while he was a member of the band. The poet used a stream of consciousness in the form of a monologue, which can be split further into two sections. The first segment is a fictitious portrayal of a long-dead civilization slouching agonizingly into oblivion. The other part explains the imminent destruction and the curtains that would fall as a result of it. Menuck begins by using the clause “The car is on fire, and there’s no driver at the wheel.” The statement describes how the character finds himself in a less anthropometric situation. The opening clause describes the world, which is in a crisis. Apparently, it shows that those who are meant to save the others from the crisis are ultimately messing up with everything. Therefore, on the road, the car has a driver who depends on the passengers to direct him instead of doing the reverse. The ”road” as used in this poem could mean some work of apocalyptic fiction. Menuck’s poem assumes a situation of a cataclysmic philosophical premise, rather than a cataclysmic physical scenario. The character in the poem faces a world with a collapsed ecosystem, rendering everything unsustainable, limited, mute, and impotent.

Conversely, ”The Dead Flag Blues” can also be seen as anticapitalistic. It is an apocalyptic vision of a logical perception of hyper-capitalism, where everything is exhausted. That is, all the available resources are consumed. The assertion can be substantiated by the statement of the unnamed narrator of the poem towards the conclusion of the poem, where it states, ”I open up my wallet, and it is full of blood.” The statement is somehow a brutal metaphor, symbolizing a value taken out of context and turning out to be broken utterly.

Probably, the poet’s vision of apocalypse, to some extent, is meant to trigger the appropriate level of anxiety and shock regarding a specified trauma within the human ecology (Rubsam 2014). The major issue that the readers of the poem ought to brainstorm why there should be a determined cause of mass destruction when in the real sense, there are numerous reasons to prevent or stop it. There is a philosophical claim that probability is unswerving than causality since causality is almost unattainable. Whereas it is impossible to gather evidence showing that human action causes global warming, it is extremely probable that it is ridiculous to disagree.

In the third stanza of the poem, the narrator uses personification in the poem where he states, ”We’re trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death.” Ideally, the inanimate machine cannot bleed but the narrator uses this statement to show the extent to which the situation is worse. This assertion alludes the engines of hyper-capitalism clearly, though it also points out to the ecological collapse. When everything is dead but us, it only tells us that we live in a void world. Ostensibly, there is no fun in living anymore. People get lonely without any form of entertainment, and there is apparently nothing to be happy about; an ecosystem filled with solitude. It is also clear that the ‘many more’ who probably would be the narrator would be approaching their end times and eating each other since there is nothing left to feed on anymore. That would be the trend in the change of lifestyle.

There is the high likelihood of certainty that the other aspect that Menuck emphasizes on in this poem is the idea of ecology. Apparently, based on the poet’s thoughts nothing works out of context. The writer’s final view against solipsism is the basic need of communication. Arguably, that is the language object, which falls without being used. In ”The Dead Flag Blues,” human collapse since it does not fit the context. The road could be an un-enmeshment experiment similar to the way in which philosophical investigations are arguments are necessities for the language location in a communication system. Menuck’s tool analysis could be one of the roadmaps to some of the interesting sections of this poem. The language tool in ”The Dead Flag Blues” is broken; hence, it is foregrounded. The poem demonstrates that the biosphere or the ecosystem is damaged; therefore, there is no more possibility of ignorance.

In sum, in the first section of the poem, Menuck gives an illustration of the harsh indictment of the contemporary world. An ecosystem, which is set to a mechanically constant droning that expands on the suffocating quality and the mind numbing of the narrative. In as much as he starts the poem with a hyperbole such as ”the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides, and a dark wind blows,” he concludes the narrative in a simple language. Every insightful reader of the poem would hypothesize that the experience that the unnamed narrator had in the poem must have changed his or her line of thinking. However, the narrator struggles to maintain maturity throughout the changing experiences in the poem. The conclusion of the first section does not attract much criticism based on the provided experience.

Nevertheless, in the second section of the monologue, the lyrics that Menuck uses are dispassionate and laconic, showing the imaginary shock, which follows the disaster. The poet uses juxtaposition of a burning building, which is scenic with the sky when he states, ”the skyline was beautiful on fire…..All twisted metal stretching upwards.” the narrator simply focuses on communicating his observations. There is a high likelihood that the narrator cannot process the emotional ramifications demonstrated within the poem. The poet further breaks to visualize the gloomy beauty of a collapsing city and comments on his state of affairs, “Kiss me, you’re beautiful, these are truly the last days”, ”for sure it is the valley of death.”

Even after being sure that there was nothing left to hold on in the damaged world, it is apparent that the narrator of this poem is still raising hopes on high through simile while stating that, ”You grabbed my hand…..And we fell into it….Like a daydream….Or a fever.” The grabbing of hand in this context could mean grasping for hope in the solitude world. The physical touch in this sense is either feverish, since their naivety is an indication of a dying world, or dreamy, as it becomes easy to fail to recall what happens around. Concisely, ”The Dead Flag Blues” is a poem that emerged as an integrated outcome of self-education, frustration, and inspiration. In another dimension, it could also be viewed as a testimony to the impulse of literal creativity.

Works Cited

Rubsam, Rob. The Rumpus Interview with Efrim Menuck. The Rumpus. 2014. Web. Apr. 5, 2017.

Ian Ilavsky & Don Wilkie. Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Web. Apr. 5, 2017.