Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Simon J. Ortiz’s "It Didn’t Matter" is a raw, unfiltered descent into the physical and psychological wreckage of addiction, incarceration, and existential despair. Set in the streets and holding cells of San Francisco, the poem captures the speaker’s chaotic inner world—shaken, sick, disoriented—mirroring the external reality of the Tenderloin, Market Street, and the Mission, neighborhoods historically known for their struggles with poverty, addiction, and homelessness. Ortiz’s use of fragmented thoughts, repetitions, and dark humor underscores the way addiction warps time, memory, and meaning. In the end, the poem offers no redemption—only a stark confrontation with the cyclical nature of self-destruction.

The opening lines establish the speaker’s detachment and confusion: "I don't even recall what they called the patrol that roamed Market Street, the Mission, and the Tenderloin. Harwood. Hopewood? Hopeful? Hellbound? Hell Patrol? I don't remember." The inability to recall the name of the patrol—whether it was something hopeful or hellish—reflects the blurred edges of the speaker’s experience. The listing of possible names, shifting from neutral to ironic to outright terrifying, conveys the way memory fails under the weight of trauma and addiction. The tone is wry, almost mocking, but beneath it is a sense of helplessness—these patrols, these forces, move through the city with an inevitability that makes remembering them unnecessary. They exist whether he names them or not.

Yet, the next line reveals a sudden urgency: "Now? I want to remember I must never be there again. Never. I swear, I swear. (Even though you're never to say never!)." The shift from past indifference to present insistence suggests an awareness, a vow to avoid this fate again. But even this resolution is unstable—the parenthetical aside ("Even though you're never to say never!") undercuts the promise, suggesting the speaker knows that relapse, return, and failure are always possibilities.

The speaker’s agency is stripped away: "You ended up where they took you." There is no control, only the mechanical process of being arrested, detained, processed. "They put me in the paddy. Shackled me to a metal cot or something." The casual phrasing ("or something") emphasizes his detachment, his dissociation from what’s happening to his body. The universe itself feels "shaky all around," a reflection of both physical withdrawal and existential disorientation. The line "I might as well have been in hell or on the way there." is both literal (the speaker’s suffering is unbearable) and figurative (he is trapped in a cycle of self-destruction).

The refrain "Like I said I didn’t really care. It didn’t matter." becomes the emotional core of the poem. This indifference is not apathy—it is survival. When everything collapses into chaos, when memory and identity disintegrate, caring becomes impossible. His posture—"My head down seemed to be the only way to hold it."—suggests not only physical weakness but also shame, exhaustion, the instinct to withdraw inward.

The next section plunges the reader into the physical horror of detox and incarceration: "Insides churning black and ugly, the world spinning with the crazies. Crazies? Besides mine, there were some real ones in that hellish haven in the Mission." The phrase "hellish haven" is deeply ironic—this place, meant to house and contain the suffering, is itself a kind of hell. The repetition of "crazies" acknowledges the speaker’s own instability while distinguishing between his sickness and the deeper madness of others. The noise is unbearable: "Sitting around and talking loud, so loud your head can't really take it but does because there is no choice." There is no escape, no silence, only the inescapable reality of others suffering alongside him.

The physical toll of withdrawal is laid bare: "Getting ferociously sick and going into the filthy toilet where you're prepared for anything. Anything." The repetition of "anything" suggests that in this place, horror is expected. The speaker’s inability to stand—"just kind of prop my wobbly self against the graffiti wall and piss."—is an image of complete degradation. The fact that the wall is covered in graffiti suggests that many have been here before, that this is a place where suffering is cyclical, etched into the very walls.

Then comes the moment of self-reckoning: "And look at what I had made my world into." This is not just a recognition of physical squalor but an existential realization—the world he inhabits is one he has, in some way, constructed through choices, addictions, and failures.

The interrogation by the social worker follows, but the questions are meaningless: "Where are you from? Where do you work? Next of kin? Do you have any money?" These are the questions of bureaucracy, of a system trying to categorize a person who has lost all connection to the structures they expect. The speaker’s response—"Fuck, I didn’t know. And I couldn’t remember."—reveals how far gone he is. It does not matter where he is from, where he worked, whether he has family or money. In this moment, none of it makes a difference.

The repetition of "It didn’t make a difference anyway—why should it?" reinforces the idea that, in this space, identity is erased. He exists only as sickness, suffering, and disorientation. His body itself betrays him: "All I felt was sick, sick, sick. My deathly sick bones were tubes of jello." The phrase "tubes of jello" conveys the body’s collapse, the absence of strength or structure. His mind follows: "My world inside was a garbage pit and burnt-down buildings." This image is apocalyptic—his inner world is ruined, destroyed, unsalvageable. Then, the most haunting revelation: "What was left of my mind was thinking evil things. It didn't matter what evil things; everything was evil to me." This line suggests not only self-loathing but also the way prolonged addiction and suffering can distort perception—when everything is pain, everything feels sinister, meaningless.

The poem’s final revelation delivers its most striking contrast: "I was at the end of the world. But it didn’t matter; it was only San Francisco." This last line encapsulates the tension between the personal apocalypse and the mundane reality of a city that continues indifferent to individual suffering. The phrase "the end of the world" suggests total collapse, a point of no return, and yet, from an external perspective, nothing extraordinary has happened—he is just another addict, another detainee, another lost person in a city that has seen it all before.

Ortiz’s free verse, short declarative sentences, and relentless repetition mirror the disorientation of withdrawal, the way thoughts loop and fragment in states of distress. The casual, almost cynical tone allows the horror to unfold without melodrama—making it all the more devastating. The lack of punctuation in some sections creates a breathless quality, mimicking the way the mind races in moments of extreme discomfort.

"It Didn’t Matter" is ultimately a poem about the annihilation of self—the way addiction strips away identity, agency, and meaning. The speaker exists in a state where nothing matters, where even memories and personal history become irrelevant. Yet, beneath the surface of this detachment, there is an implicit desire for something else—why else vow "I must never be there again. Never. I swear, I swear."? The poem does not offer hope, but it does capture the moment of reckoning, the realization of having reached the end of the world—and the lingering question of whether there is a way back.

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