Two small phrases hold Rich Mansfield's «Anymore» together, and they pull in opposite directions. "Anymore" looks backward. It closes the first section ("that's just not me / anymore") and returns as "not anymore" after the race image. "Forever more" looks ahead and ends both the middle section and the whole poem. The speaker is caught between what he refuses to be again and what he fears he may be permanently. Even the spelling matters: the title is one word, the closing phrase is two, and they share a sound while meaning almost opposite things, one a loss and the other a sentence without end.
The poem is addressed to a "you" who is never identified. Phrases like "without you" and "a broken heart" suggest a lost relationship, though the text never says so outright. What it does make clear is that this person expects something from the speaker: "the excited person you wish i use to be." The opening line sets the tone. "Cast a baleful look my way" is a dare, and "baleful," a menacing, slightly formal word in otherwise casual speech, shows him bracing for judgment. The next line deflates the drama on purpose: "just another day here in this life."
The central idea is the gap between performance and truth. "I laugh and I smile, crack my jokes, all the while / I hide behind my wall" is the poem's sharpest moment. The rhyme of "smile" and "while" ties cheerfulness and concealment into one breath, so the jokes become part of the hiding. Then the wall changes meaning. In "here I stand tall without you," it stops being a hiding place and becomes a boast. The ending undercuts that pride: "tortured mind and a battered soul / a broken heart and my blood runs cold." The strength was real as a stance but not as a feeling.
The imagery works through contrast. "You stand in the warmth of the sun" is set against "I live amongst these winds that freeze the soul." The other person is still, warm and unhurried, walking "at your own pace," while the speaker is exposed and driven, running "like I'm in a race." The cold of those winds seems to move inward by the end, since "my blood runs cold" suggests the weather has got inside him. The pivot comes at "not anymore," which can be read as dropping the race altogether. What follows is a different kind of movement: "I blaze my own trail / no matter where it goes." The goal no longer matters, only that "I got there on my own." Independence is the consolation he offers himself, and the poem leaves open whether it is enough.
The form suits that uncertainty. There are no stanza breaks and no regular meter, only lines that swing from the single word "anymore" to long, breathless runs. When that one word sits alone, it works like a held breath. The rhymes are scattered, often inside the lines or in quick pairs: way/day, smile/while, wall/tall, pace/race. They give the voice a chant-like, self-reassuring quality. The final run, "soul / cold / go / more," piles up long o sounds that slow the poem down, and "own" repeated just before it belongs to the same family. The lowercase "i," the "use to," and the loose punctuation make it read like something written fast and left unpolished. That gives it immediacy, though a critical reader might say that wall, sun, wind, race, trail and blood arrive faster than any one of them can be developed.
What makes the poem worth reading is its honesty about a very ordinary pressure: being asked to be fine. It does not resolve the contradiction between "I stand tall" and "I'm freezing." It lets both stand, and the last plea, "just let me go," stays ambiguous. It could mean release from the other person's expectations, from memory, or from the exhausting effort of keeping up appearances. That refusal to settle on one meaning leaves the ending uneasy, and it is the best reason to return to the poem.