Friday, May 16, 2008

Science?

I think so often about art, colors, visuals, sounds, I think about the way words look, the way sentences fit or do not fit together, I became an English major because I liked the way words flow, sound, even the way they look when you write them out. I don't spell like a pro, and my grammar is typically terrible, I'm in love with run on sentences and if I could just day dream and write poetry all day, I'd be a happy camper. My point being, this poem came about because I was trying to think about science and combine the right and left brain. It needs some work, but here is a rough draft.

If art were like science,
then love would be something you could prove.
A theory that could be tested and would either prove
to work, or prove to fail. Failure we would accept,
because science proves it didn’t work. The equations
would add up correctly, providing one
acceptable answer. No one would question it,
like gravity; an apple falls from a tree
and you don’t love me. A scientific fact,
everything could be mapped out, with a few
variables here and there, we could show the exact path
of meeting and loving, or not loving. Test tubes,
eye goggles, white lab coats, me and you being measured,
poked, prodded, until a result, an answer, yes or no.
My hypothesis would be that we would rise up
only so far off the ground, before we would crash
at a 32 degree angle. Maybe we would boil,
I’m going by Fahrenheit but you’ve always thought
in Celsius. Based on temperature they would confirm,
stay together, walk away, if we combine you, it would be
an explosion. Maybe I would spontaneously combust
and you could watch my gases disappear into thin air.
That would prove we were not compatible, I was on oxygen
when you turned on your Bunsen burner.
You cradled a dead pig fetus before slicing
a tiny T across its rubbery chest. One needle at a time
I stuck pins through butterflies, presenting them,
a colorful formation that proved to impress you.
Periodic tables were more your thing, the real science
of sciences, I would sob as my butterflies slowly died
poison made them doze into death, you found
the antidote by killing rats, finally you say
the time has come, I have an answer for love
By existence it does not exist within one
but will always exist in another. Science!
Does not always have the answer.

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