Doug Belleville is a poet and mental health professional. He lives in Ohio with his wife, and has three adult children and two dogs. In addition to writing, he enjoys hiking, traveling, reading and playing chess. 

He can be found on Threads and Instagram.

We are on Issue 5 of Subtext already! My how time flies. Welcome to October! In this issue, I explore a poem written by Doug Bellevile titled “Agape.” I’ve been incredibly impressed with Doug’s poetry and his exploration and discovery of himself as a poet. In his poetry, Doug is unafraid to explore the nitty gritty, the profane, the sometimes crude, and the ground of reality and what that entails. This is refreshing, seeing that (even as a “new” poet) he is willing to take those risks and push those boundaries in his art. You will see what I mean as we begin diving into this poem and as you take the time to read his other work. And you should take the time to do so.

With that, let’s dive right in. I really enjoy where Doug’s poem starts here, with:

We are the
wanderers
of the wasteland:
our hearts and
minds
and legs
all gape,
seeking joy by
mixing fate.
We trudge through
the mire of
lust and hate.

The opening line, “wanderers / of the wasteland,” immediately brings a multitude of images to my mind. Such as the biblical association, the forty years of wandering in the wilderness by the Israelites and Moses. Except their wandering was a curse caused by their own disobedience and disbelief in God. And then the very modern idea of like a post-apocalyptic wasteland where people are forced to wander to survive. Even nomads, who wander and follow a kind of migratory pattern.

So, the poem is immediately setup with this idea of wandering in a desolate place, either due to disobedience, some kind of global disaster, or not having a place to really call home. Uprooted. And this idea of seeking continues into the next lines, but we start to notice a kind of shift in the poem here. “Our hearts and / minds / and legs / all gape.” This is a very evocative and provocative line. The play on the word gape here, and how it associates with the different ideas and connotations.

For instance, when you think of the heart gaping, it gives the idea of someone being very emotionally accepting or even just emotionally raw. A gaping wound. Or their heart is open to others. I really loved this idea of doubling the meaning that’s played with and explored throughout this entire poem. This doubling continues to the minds. Whereas a gaping heart tends to be seen in a more negative light (immense pain, loss, and longing), an open mind is seen in a more positive light. With an open mind you are more likely to be more accepting of others and of other ideas. At the same time, being more open minded tends to come with an intolerance to more close-minded approaches and thoughts. And that is a concept that definitely gets explored in Doug’s poem.

With the word “gape,” there’s also that idea of wonderment and amazement, and I really like this idea that this wonderment and amazement is so immense and so profound that it causes a kind of full-bodied response: heart, mind, and legs. Now, there’s a very different kind of connotation with legs gaping. But this kind of ties into that feeling of euphoria and joy: “seeking joy by / mixing fate.” This almost crude mention of legs gaping (spread open) subverts the idea of a religious pilgrimage, which I think is largely the point of this poem. This does circle us back to the wanderers and the wasteland, the disobedience and curse to wander without being able to enter the promised land (which they could easily see, by the way). “We trudge through / the mire of / lust and hate.” These wanderers are fully owning and accepting that they are wandering. They are cast out from that idea of a religious and prudish society. They are tempting fate, making their own, and fully embracing all aspects of their humanity. Pain, knowledge, pleasure. And the raw, carnal pleasure of sexuality and the very base, almost crude way of acknowledging that: with legs spread open.

And “we trudge through / the mire of / lust and hate.” What a delightfully twisted and convoluted line. I love mire as a word. It’s such a good one at conveying the concept of being stuck or trapped in a difficult situation. Or being stuck in a state of distress or embarrassment. All of these definitions of mire work here, playing on the duality of this poem. There is an innate embarrassment and shame that’s associated with sex and sexuality that comes from religion. And then being stuck in a difficult position and being unable to escape the hate. Mired in lust. Mired in hate. Both of those are just such powerful images. Especially when you combine them, like Doug did. Because it’s not a mire of lust and a mire of hate. It’s a mire of lust AND hate. Once again, we are faced with the duality of the word. Lust is strong sexual desire. But lust is also the strong desire for other things. Like power, or money, etc. I really love how he uses the word mire here, because it captures that sticky and boggy mess of lust and hate so well. Like, for me, the pairing of lust with hate really kind of poisons it. Given, lust doesn’t always pair well with love, either, because of the nature of what lust is. But with hate? That’s a very dark edge. A kind of violent one. Combining lust with hates taints and perverts both, turning them into a terrifying ideal. Sex and hate never blend well. Not that they don’t blend, but it’s never a good thing. And that kind of bite permeates this poem, especially the first stanza.

Duality is a large theme in Doug’s poem, and it’s one that’s even captured in the title. Agape (a·gape) is to be filled with surprise or wonder or shock, to the point where it’s visible on your body, as in your mouth is wide open. Agape (a·ga·pe) is a Christian love, defined as being very distinct from erotic love (a very important separation) and is seen as the highest form of love, and the most unselfish. These two definitions are very different, obviously, because these are two very different words. But I love that juxtaposition of these differing ideals in this poem, because the sacred and profane are very much at odds in this piece. Just like lust and hate. And how “open” can be loss, acceptance, or sex. Then we come to the turn in the poem:

(we escape)

And that first stanza takes on a different slant. “We escape.” I love how Doug wrote that single turning point of the poem as a parenthetical. And parentheses are used to set aside nonessential information OR abrupt changes in thought. I love that. An abrupt change in thought. They escape the wasteland. They escape the mire of lust and hate. They escape fate. The reason they are wanderers is because they are seeking joy, seeking open hearts, minds, and even legs. Freedom and pleasure. They are looking for happiness and acceptance. But they have been stuck in the mire of lust and hate. And now, they can escape.

Which brings me to one of my favorite lines in Doug’s poem: “from without / we void within.” Five words and so loaded. Going back to the religious subtext in the poem, the void is often talked about as the missing hole within us that only god can fill. If you do a Google search for “the void within” virtually all of the results (beyond the metalcore band) have something to do with self-help, philosophy, or religion in regard to filling “the void within” ourselves. But Doug, as he’s done in the rest of his poem, flips that ideal. His phrasing suggests an internalization. Not that we are filling our void with anything external here. Instead, his phrasing seems to suggest that we are pulling the void into ourselves. Which begs me to question the dual nature that Doug has been exploring throughout this entire piece.

Void can be a complete emptiness. The lack of something. It can be that something is invalid or rejected; like a voided transaction or a contract rendered void. It can even be the act of emptying something; voiding water from a container. There is just so much in that line and I love it. “From without / we void within.” That could even be voiding the external into the internal. So, in reality, we are filling ourselves and that emptiness. Really interesting to think about. Could probably write a paper solely on that line alone. It just grabs you. And I love where it kind of pushes you into the remainder of the poem:

Aquarius dreams,
Sagittarius sins,
looking for answers
in a crimson
cross, or a
vein of stars;
purposeless and
fleeing,
into the bright
of death
we go.

The rest of the stanza does continue to inform the void within line. To me, it makes me think that we are trying to bring all of this into ourselves. We look to astrology, to theology to try and fill the void we assume to be inside us. “Looking for answers / in a crimson / cross, or a / vein of stars.” This line is pretty bold and sure of what it says. We look for answers in religion (cross) or astrology (stars), but there aren’t really answers there. They are “purposeless and / fleeing.” Love how this ties back into the “void within” line. To me, this strongly seems to suggest that the search for meaning or “fulfilment/filling” is actually pulling the void into us. We are trying to fill empty with empty, and just doesn’t work, does it? And that, I think, is the entire point of the poem. We search for meaning in places that are meaningless. We cannot fill a void in our life with another void. And I like how this interpretation ties back into the title of “Agape.” Like, we stand with mouths and minds open, reflecting the void that we are so desperate to fill. But how can we? How can we when we try to fill empty with empty, or we leave ourselves open and so anything that could fill us just flows right back out. We void the void back into the void.

At the end of the poem, we realize this. We realize just what we have escaped from and that we cannot fill ourselves with emptiness. We need to find meaning on our own and not have it handed to us. Because it’s not one size fits all. So, at the end of it all, “into the bright / of death / we go.” This is such a beautiful ending to this poem, how death is absolute and bright. It’s known. It’s where answers and meanings actually exist. Death is without the void. It is the end for all of us, whether we chase filling the void with empty pursuits or we take the time to fill ourselves with things that actually have meaning to us. It also suggests that we can chase finding fulfillment until we die. That leaves us with a choice.

Doug, I have been deeply impressed with your poetry and how you write about the topics that you do. You tackle it with a kind of abandon and disregard for the usual “norms” of what you’re writing about. You are unafraid to ask the difficult questions, to push against ideals of religion, theology, sexuality, and life. You are unafraid to mash them all together and see what comes of it. There’s an incredible beauty to that, and it’s refreshing. Keep taking these risks. Because they aren’t really risks at all.