The Sunday Poem: The Imaginary Playmate Speaks
These days when I mope in the corner
and look at him
a GrownUp
a giant with big bad teeth
I remember when the world was made
of invisible putty
shaped by stretching out a hand
and more easily made alive
than dead.
Especially when he mopes
slumped in that chair glaring
at a blank page or at nothing.
I used to try to drag him outside
and talk him into the tights & cape
or make him notice
the waxiness in flower petals
the warts
on a tree’s hairy toe
the greenfingers
of the rug lint
that scratch the walls
or even my dress, I made it myself
out of dandelion mane and mud.
but lately we just sit
on opposite sides of the room I wish
I could be solid for just a bit
and stretch my arms!
Can’t attract too much attention
to myself though
or he’d undo me with his eyes.
He got the monster under the bed that way
and the unicorn and also his wife
7 Responses to “The Sunday Poem: The Imaginary Playmate Speaks”
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I really like this. It speaks to a familiar lifestyle and the ironic results. Many of us who spend most of our time obsessing over fantasy worlds have lost track of the fantasy in our own world (and our wives too.)
When I originally wrote it, I was aiming only at the thought that losing sight of the magic of childhood might destroy the possibility of future magic in your life — even mundane magic like a happy marriage.
But then that line about staring at a blank page crept in, and it started having overtones of something else — being trapped by trying to create magic, and losing sight of it in the process, or perhaps of having writer’s block…
Eventually I tied this into a much larger series called “the genius poems.” In the genius poems, there’s an invisible playmate/alter ego called The Genius (playing not only on the meaning of great intellect, but also on the older meanings of guardian spirit). Taken as a whole, the poems sort of describe the life arc of the character in the above poem.
I always had problems though, because people of course assumed that the poems were autobiographical (they’re not, though of course I lifted incidents from my life) and that the genius was me (the whole point is that the genius ISN’T the person — it’s this external thing/being/creature).
I just started a book today that focuses on Tolkiens work from a religious angle and notes the parallels between the elements of his stories and his faith. It relates to this in that the first chapter tells how Tolkien wrote and spoke publically about ‘seeing’ the faerie world and how it was a path to knowing the divine. He felt that artists (any creative person) who could do this were not creating work but trying to show a glimpse of their vision into the divine.
It feels awkward to describe it as related to this line, but it fits in that Tolkien felt that people who could no longer see the faerie world (as children can) were lost in the post modern world with no connection to the divine (through art).
Meh. I tried to relate it at least.
This one definitely caught my attention. I liked it quite a bit. I never had an imaginary playmate, but I did have a guardian fairy.
[…] Well, long ago, “The Imaginary Playmate Speaks” opened the door to a series that I called “the genius poems.” They were about an “invisible playmate” who was, in some ways, the dominant partner. Someone who had the qualities described above: the aspects of guru and of talent and of, yes, kook. Someone who was both right and also needed puncturing. […]
[…] This was originally also one of the “genius poems” (cf “The Imaginary Playmate Speaks” and “How to Be a Genius”). Unlike the humor and sarcasm of the others, though, this one came out with a certain wistfulness for an experience I think most of us share from when we were children: that sense of wonder moment where we think we can understand everything and anything, and the world is full of mysteries that we think we can tease out. It’s almost like a moment of being awake, when the rest of our lives we are asleep. […]