If I were alone
on a desert island
I would pick at my lips
all day long.
I would sit underneath
the only tree
with no one
to judge me.
I would drink my own blood,
so I never got thirsty.
And when I got too sick
to raise my hand to my mouth
I would only be hurting myself.
-----
If I were alone
on a dessert island
I would eat Mounds bars first
and York patties second.
I would follow carrot cake
with angel food
until the magma lava
caught in my throat
and I had to wash it down
with muscat.
When I got too sick
to raise my hand to my mouth,
I would roll defiantly over
and eat myself into a dark hole.
-----
If you and I
were alone together,
we might not survive
the island.
I might believe
we should raise a flag
but you might want
to burn the vegetation.
You might knock me out of a coconut tree
breaking both my legs,
so you could drink
more milk yourself.
You wouldn't know how
to treat an infection.
When I got too sick
to raise my hand to my mouth,
you would never get
to the root of the problem.
-----
When I am alone,
I am still with you.
You feed me everything
I eat.
You write me everything
I read.
You stick in my head
like a song I'll never hear again.
When I get too sick
to raise my hand to my mouth,
maybe one of you will kiss me
and say you understand.
I'm a little creeped out to have written this one. It's an exploration of a bad habit I have of picking at my lips when i'm bored or stressed. It's an odd, embarrassing and somewhat violent habit, as I imagine a lot of such things are.
So the poem is about different aspects of this habit: the fact that it's very solitary and takes me (literally and figuratively) into myself; the satisfaction of it -- it's sort of a physical overindulgence the way eating too many sweets is; the conflict it creates when i feel like other people are taking me away from it.
The last section is more of a meditation on the intrusion of other people into one's life generally. I'm not sure it totally fits with the rest of the poem, but I think it's important to acknowledge that we never escape the influence of our surroundings, our culture, upbringing, etc., and so are never totally independent.
