Three Poems for Discord

by Slipshod Extension

Rating: everyone
Tags: Discord, Princess Celestia, Anthology, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 2487

Atrocious meter and constructions abused may yet contrive to leave the odd reader amused.

Inconsistent meter and constructions abused may yet contrive to leave the odd reader amused.

Three interpretations of a tricksy draconequus.

Published 2020-10-31 05:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2024-01-14 03:41:37 UTC

Some Old Folks Bicker About the Entertainment

“I say,” said he (with unconscionable glee)
“That she’s run pell-mell to the Everfree
There to chase after owls and trip over snakes
all ‘to find her dear Princess whatever it takes.’”

"I say," said I, as I sat in the sky,
"If she goes to the Everfree, there she will die.
There the boughs close in, and the dark wolves course
through the underbrush hoping to dine on fresh horse."

"Oh, my pets never kill," he said, "they only thrill
to spark terror in hearts and set hooves shaking. Still,
I've high hopes for this one. Often in fearful night
can the friction and strain spark spirits to new light."

"I confess to surprise," I said, "amidst your lies,
That you admit to care whether she lives or dies.
Are you out of deception? Denial run dry?
Will the sky at last see even mad Chaos cry?"

"You cannot think," said he, "you can understand me.
That the sun on the water can map the deep sea!
I care not for your ponies, but only for change.
This old stalemate bores me, so let's rearrange."

"Oh, I see," offered I, "you've a bored aesthete's eye.
Lives and patterns your playthings: old low, the new high.
But in choosing is order, in preference care;
You profess indiff'rence, but you cannot but dare."

"Well, touché then," he said, with a toss of his head,
"I admit that you ponies are no fun when dead.
This stagnation does bore me. I blame the poor ghost.
Having lost all she had she's content now to coast."

"And what demon," I said, "placed the sheets on that bed?
But you laugh at us--architects of our own dread!
With our hearts all aflutter, on cheeks sorrow’s stain,
Our coats all in tatters—in every step pain—"

"Yes, in every step pain!" he sneered, "with naught to gain.
That mare's love is a leaf in the wind. I would fain
Show to her what her suffering's worth when she's dust:
When she molders away, as all memories must."

I felt my old heart stir. "Does that matter to her?
In the long sweep of time all we do is a blur.
Yet those ponies you torment still taste more of life
Than you've found in a thousand years of our dry strife.
Yea, ask any bereavéd what doom they would choose:
Whether to have lost or to have nothing to lose."

Author's Note

Inspired by, and thus a poor tribute to, Monochromatic's The Enchanted Library. If by some bizarre happenstance you find this poem but haven't read one of the biggest stories on this site, uh, check it out. It's pretty darned good!

A Snake Shaped Like Interstices

I'm afraid you've mistaken me, poe-facéd foal
For primordial chaos, or some other role
In Manichean struggle posed against the force
Of Order and of Good and the world of Horse.

But you know, young mare, Discord is nothing without
Some pattern to disrupt or some rule to flout
I admit in these transgressions I do delight,
But I've this defense, at least: you started this fight.

And my weapons, furthermore, I never did forge;
They emerge from overweening hubris engorged
On the dream of a net that can bind in its knots
All that is or might be, and all you lot forgot.

For once upon a time, my dear (your poets never sing)
The globe was young, the dew was fresh, and I was everything.

The air and water flowed as one
Hear me: no words can tell you how
Light ran like music from the sun
And of one piece were grass and cow.

In timeless bliss I spent my days
Though forests and the whis'pring breeze
On afternoons and nights I'd laze
I was the wind; I was the trees.

'Til ponies looked on hill and rill
(I damn their thoughtful, seeking eyes)
And slowly cast aside whole truth
For precise, ever-smaller lies.

Abstractions and
distinctions

and they
Cut me

vivisected

limb

from

limb

with blades
of
measured sound.

Quills and figures, maps and lines.
Periphery and metropole
What boundary each word defines:
Each leaf and twig and root and bole.

Recall you not that a tree once stood
Stretching arms to the unguarded sky
And that tree was but part of a far greater wood
And the wood of a world named I!

But the wood is gone, now; it is balsams and oaks
Made of organelles locked in cramped cells.
The grid partitions all. Life strains under the yoke.
Wriggling from words' grasp, it rebels.

For there is still some space twixt the twig and the leaf,
Twixt the mare and the colt and the foal;
In interstices threading like rot through belief
That the parts can account for the whole.

And it's there you find me--in the grey-shades and fights
Between this word and that for demesne;
The penumbra where time is both twilight and night,
And the coat is at one with the mane.

So when this one is thine--or no, wait, is it mine?
When you can't tell a net from a sieve;
When you find a new kind that crosses an old line,
There, where orders collide, I still live.

Bonus: I Am the Very Model of a Solar Princess Alicorn

Bonus: I Am the Very Model of a Solar Princess Alicorn

I am the very model of a solar princess alicorn,
Behold my incandescence as I light all Canterlot each morn,
Of Elements of Harmony I know the names and bearers too
I've pony friends in ev'ry place, arrayed in ev'ry pastel hue!
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters strange and magical,
My arcane taxonomy was once counted brave and radical,
Of spells and mystic theory I have kept abreast in ev'ry age,
And if not for my student I'd still be history's greatest mage!

I run my bureaucracy with the skill of lifetimes manifold,
I treat with drakes and griffons and my bonded word can trade for gold,
In short, in camaraderie, ministration, and wisdom worn,
I am the very model of a solar princess alicorn!

I lived our mythic history, King Sombra and dark Nightmare Moon,
I faced the ancient terrors at whose names young ponies sob and swoon,
A thousand years I raised the sun and shepherded her lunar twin,
And suffer'd in silence endless reminders of my sister's sin;
I cultivated Canterlot from a forgotten mountain fort,
I wrote the whole of pony law, each sacred right and traffic tort,
I know my subjects each by name; with gifts at humble huts I call,
And sabotage each year my insuff'rable nobles' fav'rite ball!

Yet let it not be said of grace and class that I am ignorant,
With poise impeccable I trot from lofted hall to campaign tent,
In short, in majesty, in historical deeds and duty sworn,
I am the very model of a solar princess alicorn!

In fact, when I can overcome a bull-man and a pink preteen,
When I can tell at sight my adopted niece from a Changeling Queen,
When I have won a fight against a recent threat to Canterlot
(For though in ages past I did great deeds, these days, I'd rather not)
When I put down my cake and reinvigorate my muscle tone,
When by villains of the week I no longer can be overthrown,
In short, when I take up the martial work that I have long disowned,
You'll say a better solar alicorn has never sat a throne!

For though parades of disasters march on us beneath skies darkling,
When evening comes, I'll leave solutions to my protégé spark'ling;
But still, you can't deny as by triumphant dawn the clouds are torn,
I am the very model of a solar princess alicorn!

Author's Note

Pirates of Penzance is well-known and public domain, but it doesn't feel right to do this without some sort of citation.

Author's comment: What are these poems about?

Author's comment: What are these poems about?

I think it's generally looked down upon for a writer to explain their own work, but it's unlikely that anyone else will analyze these pieces. Thus, in the hope that it may be interesting or useful to someone, somewhere, someday, I'll briefly discuss what I was trying to do with each of these poems. I claim no monopoly on interpretation, and if you get something else out of these, that's perfectly valid! If you don't want my interpretation to color yours, it's probably best not to read this.

The conceit of the cycle is that it provides three different perspectives on Discord, each empathizing with him more than the last.

"A Nightmare Night Rhyme" is meant to offer a sort of folkloric, naive interpretation--the way ponies would talk about Discord when (if) he was just a half-remembered figure of legend. Accordingly, he's presented as a great evil, fundamentally opposed to the Elements of Harmony, and ultimately treacherous. The poem takes the form of a dare, which foals might repeat to one another around a campfire (not unlike real-world ghost stories about how to summon demons, etc.). Stanzas 2-6 explain that the way to summon him is by directly contravening the five substantive Elements of Harmony (lie, against honesty; be cruel, against kindness; share misery, against laughter; indulge jealousy, against generosity; ignore obligations, against loyalty). Stanza 7 is just a namedrop. The final stanza promises that, actually, summoning Discord by acting selfishly will bring you only suffering, and he will not do what you want. At the time of writing, I had in mind that Discord could have played some role in Luna's transition into Nightmare Moon. Thus, the final stanza suggests that trafficking with Discord could get one banished to the moon (and provides him an opportunity to exhibit his playfulness).

"Some Old Folks Bicker About the Entertainment" is meant to offer a perspective on Discord from someone who knows him well, but regards him as an enemy. This is made more--perhaps fatally--obscure by the poem's inspiration by Monochromatic's The Enchanted Library. The poem is a thus a sort of fanfic-fanfic based on that story. In the setting of The Enchanted Library, Celestia and Luna are gone, Cadance rules, as I recall, as an intangible, isolated ghost, and Twilight Sparkle is a ghost trapped in the ruins of the Golden Oak Library. In the story, Rarity stumbles upon the Library and comes to love the ghost Twilight. The poem is loosely based on this scenario. It centers on a debate between Discord and Celestia, the latter envisioned as impotently banished to the sun, about the value and meaning of the fleeting lives and loves of ponies. Discord pretends nihilism, claiming that he is interested in other creatures only for entertainment. Celestia argues that even this interest constitutes a (thin, cowardly) form of emotional investment, and that someone who lives a brief life full of passion has a far more meaningful existence than do the bickering immortals. Celestia views Discord as misguided, suffering, but still ultimately an adversary. She has an idea about why he does what he does--a desire for meaning alloyed with a deep emotional cowardice. This drive doesn't appear in his own statement of purpose (Poem 3), but, then, he probably wouldn't recognize or admit to such feelings.

"A Snake Shaped Like Interstices" is supposed to be Discord's description of himself, his manifesto. He argues that ponies view him as absolute evil, opposed to order (see Poem 1), but that he is actually the inevitable consequence of contradictions between and within the categorization schemes ponies use to make sense of the world. There is no sense of disorder without a contrasting vision of order, created by thinking beings. The poem presents a sort of origin myth, with Discord claiming that he is the spirit of a holistic world with no categorizations or divisions between anything (light, music, sun, grass, cow). He claims that this holism was cut apart and tortured ("vivisected") by the invention of language, abstraction, and categorization schemes, and he mourns for the unnamed, holistic world that was. Discord states that he survives only in spaces of ambiguity (when categorizations conflict or leave gaps--is this mine or yours? Who decides what is the center and the edge of civilization? Where does the twig end and the leaf begin?). Thus, Discord--the breaking of order--is the consequence of order (or of the intersection between contradictory orders). However, even in his twisted, marginal form, he is eternal, for categorizations are always changing, always conflicting with one another, and never capable of containing the full complexity of the world. In short--he claims he is the inevitable consequence of ponies' efforts to make sense of and organize the world, the product of their hubris, not some demon from outside; and he cannot be banished so long as they continue to order and organize an infinitely complex and shifting world. "You ponies started this fight, you created me, and I will always be with you even in your very efforts to eradicate me." That's what I was going for, anyway.

"I Am the Very Model of a Solar Princess Alicorn" is just a bit of fun that popped into my head. I didn't think it merited a standalone post, so I included it as a bonus.

A Nightmare Night Rhyme

I dare thee, oh brave one, when night creepeth dark,
If no monster can stand 'gainst thy sword,
Gather cockatrice tears and shaved timberwolf bark
And conjure the chimeras' fell lord.

If thy life would be eased by a falsehood or two,
And thou hast been restrained for too long,
Draw thy breath and spit falsehoods 'til thy face turn blue,
For a lie is his favorite song.

If thou tirest of caring for each little thing,
And thou wishest to straighten thy spine,
Crush the weaklings who whimpering to thy hooves cling,
For to him, cruelty's a fine wine.

If bright laughter and cheer thy long travails mock
And thy heart is bound with barbéd chain,
Share thy misery; destroy of joy every stock
For his sinew's the spreading of pain.

If thy friend hath a treasure which thou dost desire,
Yet which money and love cannot buy,
Keep thy money and love and set her home afire
For his heart is a former friend's cry.

If thou doest for one what she'd not do for thee,
And a slave of thyself thou hast made,
Shed thy bindings and of obligation be free,
For his lifeblood is debt long unpaid.

If the song in thy heart rattles dull in thy head
And in chorus thy voice is ignored,
Grab an out-of-tune fiddle and paint the town red
For his name is a dissonant chord.

And although his coming disappointeth thy hope,
And life becometh chaos and ruin,
If thou demandest aught of him, he'll answer, "Nope--
But you'll soon win a trip to the moon!"