Matt D.. Dimler
Anatomy of a Poem

“If God doesn't exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence—that is, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man…Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards…Man is not definable, because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.”

--Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism

Through the threshold of my boyhood,
Out of the Cave of Shadows,
Devoid of mother's tender breast,
Lacking stepping stones and helping hands,
Unable to seek answers from fellow man;
Unable to ask questions,
Unable to see,
Unable to hear the beckoning of the world,
To feel the bite of the new-year wind;
To sympathize with the macabre tears of Ester's mourning skies,
Unable to believe in the majesty of the mountainside;
From word to sentence
To the meaning of existence,
From poetry to life
I, just a boy in love, with what I do not know,
Float endlessly, happily through dead empty space.

I have love, I do love,
But I do not make it—that is a man's thing to do—
And I am just a Boy
For I have no object of my passion,
I have no passion for absence of desire,
Without desire for lack of understanding,
Without understanding for lack of the propensity to create,
And I am unable to create because I am just a Boy—nothing more than a creation.

And the Earth turns, trees die and are reborn, Gulls fly away,
Away from death and decay
Just as men deny the possible inevitability
Of fatal illness in the common cold,
As men flock in migration, away,
Away from their own demise,
And when the time is right,
When they tire of flight
They fly home again;
When death is home and home is beautiful.

I am dead, and I am beautiful, and like spring my birth
Will flower the world with purples and blues, and greens a-plenty.
I am the sun, the moon, the stars,
The fawn that writes its history in snowy hoofprints,
The hunter who preys upon her mercilessly in sport;
I am the leaves, the grass, Sunday morning family breakfast
That smells like gold—eggs over easy, bacon, fresh toast, orange juice—
A woman's delicate kiss, kist with whisps of fragrant tulips;
I am floating though dead space
Waiting to be born.
And then I woke up.