Early Girl

Hello, and Welcome to my work, I am The Sven-Bo! 

I have always been and continue to be a spiritual and creative creature. The title of this blog is derived from "agápē", a Greek word describing the highest and purest form of love, and the Sanskrit term "bodhisattva", a facet of Buddhism describing a condition in which one aspires to acquire enlightenment through compassion and altruism. Two concepts that I attempt to exemplify in my every day existence are Love and Beauty: When one seeks to show Love towards and to find the Beauty that lies within all things, reality suddenly becomes a wonderful happenstance, filled with awe-inspiring curiosities. 

I suppose I will begin by sharing my most celebrated work thus far. The poem "Early Girl" was inspired by a story I heard while taking a Death & Dying course at Suffolk County Community College. The poem went on to win first prize in the April, 2010 issue of their literary magazine, Cassandra.

Early Girl

by The Sven-Bo! 

The car was just a heap of scrap lying in a fetal pose,

An abstract morsel of coiled metal at the side of the road. 

Baptized in broken glass and spilled antifreeze,

A gaping hole where the Jaws of Life had pried her free. 

From one look at the wreckage, one wonders how the occupant had faired;

One look at the girl in the hospital bed and the wondering stops there.

The somber hum of the machinery, plastic boxes and vinyl bags,

An animatronic symphony, blinking lights and tax dollar price tags.

A single snarky tone - B flat - the EKG monitor;

Umbilical conduits connect her to the bleating ventilator. 

These trundle apparatuses keep the girl alive,

But to most of us, the girl we knew before has died.

This visage, riddled with holes and hotwired to regulators,

Is no more akin to the original than its resemblance - a doppelganger!

Where is the healthy twenty-three year old fiancé,

Whose wedding day was a mere two months away?

Where had the radiant smile gone that used to adorn her face?

All her attributes appear to have been recklessly erased. 

The girl we loved is gone, taken by a wasteful whim,

A leisurely drive into the bosom of the seraphim. 

All the fMRI scans show up blank and monochrome,

Neither a shutter nor a blip of thought is within her tarnished dome. 

The doctors sat us down and told us there was nothing they could do,

But when we finally decided to pull the plug, we lost the baby too.