A Cyborg Lover Would Be More Dependable
I am uniquely suited for my karaoke solo:
I will sing “I’m Your Man” and Leonard
Cohen will die a little bit inside. I know dried
flowers are bad feng shui; in fact I am versed
in the sounds of decay. Babies, pointing
at the homeless vets on Burnside and saying
“baby,” pointing at piles of sheets on the hotel
laundry carts, saying “baby,” pointing—pointing—
incessantly pointing! A cyborg lover
would be more dependable than you, you
and your erratic heart beat, but you, you
are not that different: half-human, half-perfect
bodies, one built, one born. I’m just looking.
I’m only looking for the chance to storm the stage
and if by some sleight of hand I happen
to save the world, I mean by unhinging—
(trying
not to think about tongue worms or
acid rain today)
the dying
must be stopped they only lead to
further decay. Well, this is something
that has crossed my mind
| Ellen Welcker |
|
levelheaded: A Cyborg Lover Would Be More Dependable
The early jumps this poem makes—from Leonard Cohen to feng shui, from feng shui to pointing babies, from pointing babies to a cyborg—shadow the speaker’s thoughts about decay, the poem’s most prominent thematic thread. This consideration of decay begins when the speaker playfully imagines “Leonard / Cohen will die a little bit inside.” Her playfulness turns solemn at the “dried flowers” of the following sentence, and her solemnity becomes outright bleakness with the urban decay represented by the “homeless vets on Burnside.” The distinctive complexity of the speaker’s thoughts may make her “uniquely suited for [her] karaoke solo,” but those same thoughts collude to create a sort of one-off, spitfire philosophy on the impermanence of everything.
When this philosophy runs its course though, the speaker shifts into a more personal space. The poem’s title line swells with emotion as a repeated “you, you” enacts the “erratic heartbeat” it surrounds. The repetition in “half-human, half-perfect” and “one built, one born” becomes a plea for the presumed (and impossible) dependability of a “cyborg lover.” The speaker’s late and reluctant hopefulness—“if by some sleight of hand I happen / to save the world”—opens the rest of the poem to a similarly reticent optimism. Maybe we’re meant to focus on the love song in the poem’s early lines. Maybe we should see a certain beauty in the dead flowers. Maybe we’re meant to recognize the openness and innocence of the baby’s pointing. And of course, we’re meant to see all of that, good and bad.
The final lines of the poem, “this is something / that has crossed my mind,” recapitulate both sides of what the speaker has been getting at the whole time. Firstly, that nothing is permanent. Everything disintegrates (as does this poem, structurally). But secondly, that in the act of writing it down, of committing it to a poem, there is some hope that even if beauty or emotions or ideas won’t last forever, we can try to give them a bit more permanence by committing them to art.
– The Editors
