Soliloquy

This game is my personal visual interpretation of Lawrence Ypil's poem entitled 'Soliloquy' as part of my Youth Idea Party task in Happy Garaje.

controls:

start - start the game in the title screen

a - interact

Soliloquy

by Lawrence Ypil

I tended a tree, once, thinking that if it died one summer,
I'd die, and if it lived— First the leaves gone
and then the branches. And then the caterpillars,
having eaten much of what was left, wrapped themselves
into what they'd gathered. The heat was terrible.
Barren scrag of a log and the horde of wings attached to it.
I believed, once, that all it took to resurrect the world
was to imagine myself as god of all. I was mistaken.

I believed in a world that believed in my mother,
when she said: the well-planned day was best
and the guest that arrived with gifts and
on the dot, the plane landed. My father
tended his garden and depending on the year,
gave fruits to friends, depending on the friend.
In a drought, the cacao flowers.
The best use of piss is fertilizer.

When asked to draw, I drew. When asked to paint a picture
of the world, of mostly girls— The stick-men bored me,
no prowess promised by a circle for a head, no penis.
A triangle, at least, meant dress, a twirl around the face, a bob,
a ribbon somewhere. Arthur looked it over: again?
Edgar snickered. Six petals around a ball became a flower.
When asked to pass the paper, I passed the paper.

I knew the neighbors kissed by watching them. I knew
a classmate thought she wasn't pretty by the way
she played the the piano with a trill. So when my partner
to the dance had called in sick, I knew her steps.
Mastery: pretend. My feet tapped her hapless rhythm
on the ledge. At the edge of the room, I unfurled
my fingers.

On the chalkboard of love, my name was missing.
Carol's beside John's. Denise touching Antonio.
Christian crossed the school-world like-love
so he could fondle Dana. Oh cosmology of Roberto!
I am tempted to replace the letter-bed beneath
the girl who forgets my name. God bless
the boy who doesn't say a word but remembers.

I solved the problems. I measured the arcs. I calculated
the angles of triangles, the most likely fate of a ball
thrown across a field into distance. Although,
I had difficulty with subtraction: to remove
from the hand four fingers does one begin with the thumb?
I got the hang of it on my mother's ruler. Cut-cut-bam.
The way the mind work is that it chooses
the best trick it can play on itself then repeats it.

Dear strange: Dear child: with a shroud to cover
your shoulders, if I did as you did, then I would talk
without moving. I would tell a story without a lesson.
The skin cold under the hand of sinners.
When the world told a joke, I would pretend not to listen.

Give me a staff and let me be Adam. Give me
my father's garden to name the plants.
To think the world's creation happened
in the afternoon was a delusion.
I walked on the grass. I pointed out the ferns.
Water from a neighbor's hose could be the monsoon.
I took my time with the flowers.