A Gift

The following poem was a gift from my friend, Ben Dower.  He is an amazing poet, and I've been begging him for years to write one about me. So finally, we reached an agreement: I would play this game he (and my sister, coincidentally) loves, and bake cookies, and we'd all hang out, and then I could have my poem. So after much anticipation and a delicious adventure through Cataan, here is what I received today (he says the inspiration for the title came from a previous blog entry, by the same name):

White Chocolate

Tell me, where do you get off
speculating about your identity,
wondering if you would be a better dancer
if only you had a more rhythmic coloration connotation
implying that your curves are somehow misplaced,
as though only Africa had earned that voluptuous continental silhouette.

For surely someone ought to have warned you
that such superfluous speculation only leads
to bubbles bursting, internal detonation,
and a complete crash in consumer confidence.

The lost love between a girl and her onomatopoeia
should never be interrupted by anything less than phonaesthetic perfection.

But enough about your laughter
and a smile that needs no hyperbole.

Such elusive excellence evades description,
leaving me struggling to pin you down with worldly adjectives,
that leave my love-struck soul free
to wander, exploring your lips and curvature of your left shoulder
pretending to be a philosopher-king, tracing
enlightenment in your contours, wondering how so much joy
can come from a single source
and finding the emotion difficult to quantify.

But forget Descartes, what about a-la-carte!

For like a perfect pastry platter, oft' tasted but never duplicated
you are filled with the most delicious of internal contradictions.
Take one part master chef and flambé over liquid liberalism,
with a pinch of the suffragette movement, and a thoroughly diced
impressionist painting for looks, an eternal sunset entrée on the tongue.

The subject of much desire, yet never wanting for preeminence,
you are to be coddled only at the greatest risk, lest you boil over
and scald the perpetrator with a self-evident independence
that need not be declared.

So let us not pull up your roots
to speculate about whether your genetics
might be better choreographed. Plant
metaphors are all inherently sexist anyway.

And while I would gladly abandon all worldly pursuits
liberate myself from all senses save one,
if you only chose to envelop me someday,
for now in this silent moment
simply enjoying these Platonic relations,
the knowledge of your existence
leaves me content to hunger forever
reveling in the simple knowledge
that you exist.