Girlfriend, Deconstructed

Certain things need to be cut out,
rearranged, pasted down.

Long, straight, shiny black hair
like a Chinese doll,
and big, black Bambi-doe eyes.
An upside-down-heart-shaped ass
squeezed into straining tight jeans,
crouched before an art school locker.

But what about these clippings here
that show her as nothing but
a hairy Italian dwarf
with a bad case of acne?

What the author fails to acknowledge
is his emotional ambivalence towards women.
His lovers are either idealized or denigrated
to the point where his actual
physical perception of them is affected,
airbrushing away any flaws
or magnifying them into grotesquerie.

The poem continues with another metaphor
equating his memories of the relationship
with notes for a manuscript.

Certain things, once written in longhand,
are now word-processed and edited.

The concert I don't remember
because it was spent frantically snogging;
devouring lips and tongues
and falling out of our seats.

Her dark eyes flaring red
when her mother praised my artwork over hers,
and how I neglected to defend her.

The dirty, smelly bus ride home
from the party where she rejected me,
driving me into a love-shorn isolation,
like a sacrificial scapegoat
cast out into the desert.

The images chosen for the last three stanzas
paint a picture of a passionate relationship,
and fire was certainly present between us.
We were often akin to dry tinder
smoldering under a magnifying glass,
waiting to spring into blaze,
but other less glamorous emotions
also had their brushfire sparks to ignite.

What my poetic friend is trying to say
with his flowery language
is that he desperately wanted to fuck this girl,
but she never let him,
probably because she didn't trust him,
due to the fact that he was never genuine with her.
Having had little sexual experience,
he wanted her to see him as a stud
to mask his insecurity,
but she saw right through his false bravado and posturing.

He asked her out in a very businesslike manner
rather than honestly expressing his feelings of attraction,
and then tried to pressure her into sleeping with him,
rather than seducing her like the Don Juan he wanted to be.

The author here has cleverly, if opportunistically,
appropriated the critical voice,
using it first as his own,
admitting to embellishment and selective memory,
and then as a plain-talking third person alter ego,
confessionally "spilling the beans,"

Like a fish unaware of the water he swims in,
the author fails to note the subtext of guilt and narcissism
running through the poem,
and refuses to take responsibility
for solipsistically recounting the details of the relationship
as if his thoughts and feelings defined it,
as if without his musings it would cease to have been.

He continues with another metaphor.

Scores of soundbites need to be sifted through
and sorted for inclusion in the documentation.

"I don't want to have to put on a smile
every time I see you."

"I'm not going to sit here and
hold your hand all night."

"What you really need is a wife.
You should find someone
and get married."

It's interesting how the dialogue
that I remember most clearly from her
is angry, harsh and critical.
Was I really guilty of behaving
in a smothering and manipulative manner?

Okay-now we're slipping into psychoanalysis.
This is not poetry, just adolescent whining.
What Mr. Sensitive Poet doesn't see
is that she was a cold, immature, fucked-up bitch,
and that all he wanted from her was warmth and intimacy;
but he's such a masochist
that he takes any accusation from this little cunt,
no matter how ill-founded, as gospel truth.
She wouldn't even sleep with him, for fuck's sake!

Once again, the author has used the device
of speaking in multiple voices,
this time to illustrate his internal conflict
over the interpretation of his memories.
It seems as if he is now consciously aware
of his previously hidden feelings
of shame and anger towards the subject of the poem,
and the tone has changed to one of introspection.

He continues:

Certain bits of data are now seen
through a microscope or telescope,
adjusting their size and distance.

The thrill that ran up my spine
when I kissed her,
my hands encircling her tiny convex waist.

The photograph of her ex-boyfriend,
who broke her heart
and left her like her runaway father,
and who looked just like me.

The party where she abandoned me
and I sat alone and untouched,
a miserable leprous pariah
at a college make-out orgy.

You know, I think I was really traumatized by that party.
Everyone was paired off and sucking face except me,
because my girlfriend had a bug up her ass,
and I just sat there watching
and feeling like a total reject.
It's still painful to write about.

I'm sorry, but this sounds like overblown angst
from a teenager's diary.
What's really painful are the earlier traumatic experiences
of abandonment and withdrawal
that this memory stimulates,
first with his parents neglect
and then with the private elementary school
he was kicked out of.

The poem ends with the author's secondary voices
taking on the roles of patient and analyst;
a rather unoriginal and un-poetic attempt at closure
which ultimately fails,
as the ambivalence and conflict remain unresolved.

The poem as a whole is meant to point out
the arbitrary and dishonest act
of making art from autobiography,
but in the long run,
the author's choice of tonal variety
and fragmentary structure
does nothing more than reveal his insecurities
and deep-seated complexes.

Then, when the files are completely catalogued
and the collage finally takes shape,
a single picture emerges:

The two of us sitting on the art museum steps
on a cheerful spring day,
the sun kneading the knots from our shoulders
with a warm, gentle massage,
and feeling a bit dejected
because the museum was closed
when we thought it would be open.

She puts her child-smooth hand in mine
and this small feminine gesture
intoxicates me with unbridled delight.

A man walks by and says,
"Smile! It's a lovely day
and you're with a beautiful young woman."

My eyes drift up to a bird on a tree branch.
A bird whose sparkling feathers
are the most radiant, breathtaking,
sapphire-brilliant blue
I have ever seen.

David Aronson
March 2006