On Love Poems

MARIO: I wrote you a love poem.

MARIA: Oh really? Is it good?

MARIO: I think it is the best one ever written. It truly captures how I feel about you.

MARIA: Let’s hear it, then.

MARIO: Well it’s really long. I couldn’t read all of it to you, not right now at least.

MARIA: How long is it?

MARIO: About nighty pages.

MARIA: That’s a monstrously long poem. Why did you write such a long one?

MARIO: It is the shortest length with which I could sufficiently describe my love for you. It has a complete mapping of our genes, from which we have evolved mechanisms to drive good mates together, and we match better than 94 percent of the population so it is evident that evolution had it such that we gained feelings for each other. I’ve included brain scans showing my neurological states of my brain and which show the profound ways my neurobiological composition has been altered since you’ve been present in my life. It also consists of fifteen pages of highly detailed phenomenological description. The piece encompasses the best description possible to capture how I feel about you.

MARIA: That’s not a love poem at all!

MARIO: Well, technically it is prose poem. But it says more than all the other love poems in the world combined.

MARIA: It doesn’t say anything about how you feel about me!

MARIO: Of course it does. These are all the facts that are possibly accessible to me. This is every last bit of information you could possibly get.

MARIA: You’re just trying way too hard.

MARIO: Trying to hard? But my poem shows how much I feel for you; it is only possible for mean to try this hard.

MARIA: No, that’s not what I mean. You’re not supposed to try this hard to capture what you really feel in the most precise way you can.

MARIO: Why is that?

MARIA: Because it’s supposed to be beyond words.

MARIO: Beyond words? But then it’s just silly to put it into writing in the first place. If someone thought this, there’d be no reason why they’d write a poem.

MARIA: But maybe that’s what a love poem is supposed to do—show the silliness of describing your love for someone when you could be out there loving them. Explaining just becomes unimportant if one is really in love, and that’s what a love poem shows.

MARIO: But if love poems do talk about love, then they undo their very reason for existence.

MARIA: Yes that’s why they inspire us. Not to read more poems, but to stop thinking about it so much and just be in love.

MARIO: Wow, how do you know all of this?

MARIA: I studied lots of poetry back when I was in school.

MARIO: Hey, I never knew that! How come you never wrote me a love poem?

MARIA: Are you kidding me? Do you think I could possibly write a good one with the knowledge of how silly they are? That’d be impossible!