Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Whole

I came across this poem yesterday; it was the base for the Babelfish poem in this post (the second of the three things), and upon rereading both the original and the Babelfish version, in this case I might (gasp) actually like the original better. It's not great, but I sort of like the ending. This was written on July 1st, 2009, over a year ago, and I admit that it was written as a reaction to a line in a poem Adam had just written, a line about a feeling of gratitude for "making me whole." July of last year was not a time when I was eager to read about someone (else) making Adam whole, and that line stung, seeming to shut me out of his life somehow just when I was finally feeling like maybe I could be a real part of it. The first part of this poem is an expression of the resentment I could neither suppress nor express to him, and the second an imagined response. So that is the context. Here is the poem.


She makes you whole, you say?
Fine.
Then strip the rest away.
First your computer, you don’t need that.
Nothing but distractions
From her sparkling green eyes.
No more time wasted on xkcd,
Sports statistics, silly op-ed articles
On the election in Iran.
The TV goes too of course –
Who needs Family Guy, when she’s all the family you’ll ever want?
Speaking of which, let’s whisk away your parents;
You won’t miss them, will you?
You won’t have a thought to spare for your brother,
Off at a party with your old friends,
Crowding around your Playstation, jeering each other, laughing.
Every sunset to come is blocked from you,
Behind the curtain of her hair
Flowing down onto your chest as you lie together.
The only blossom in the world is her smile.
You need nothing else.
You are complete.
You are whole.
Right?

Wrong.
She alone does not complete me.
But without her,
The laughter is too empty,
The world too hopeless,
Each victory meaningless,
Each sunset too lonely to bear.
She is the board that holds the puzzle together;
She is the last term in the infinite sum,
Without which the asymptote is never,
Quite,
Reached.

Saturday, August 07, 2010

One Year

Happy Anniversary, Adam. ♥