BEAUTIFUL boy with long legs
You have beautiful eyes with long lashes
Yet you see not her crooked teeth
Her unruly hair in a ponytail
Her irritating smile, her Gen Z entitlement
Does she hide unsexy short legs
Under those P.E.-issue jogging pants?
My love is not blind. Oh no, not at all!
***
I hope you read this as a poem.
If you see jealousy, I hope you understand that it is also a love poem.
I hope you see the beautiful boy.
He is obviously in love.
Not to the speaker obviously.
Although it is obvious to us that the speaker is in love with the boy.
***
There is jealousy, all right.
But there’s so much love in this poem:
The boy’s blind love for the girl.
The speaker’s love for the boy.
(Via the jealousy for the girl. Haha!)
***
Now, is the speaker’s love really not blind?
Can we trust the speaker’s “My love is not blind. Oh no, not at all!”?
Why is the beautiful boy dazzlingly brilliant?
Like shiningly beautiful that we do not have an idea whether he is fair or copper skinned?
How long or short is his hair?
***
We can assume that his teeth are better than her crooked teeth.
But what about her smile?
Is she irritating because she smiles without care?
Like she’s entitled like the generation who have these unbridled confidence instilled and fed by social media and tech savviness?
***
What about “love is blind”— is that not a cliche?
It is, it is.
The idea is so cliche that it is now a theory. Haha.
But I don’t think the saying here is.
In fact, I think the situation here is rather fresh, rather new.
The speaker thinks the beautiful boy is blind loving the girl with the crooked smile.
And though the speaker denies it, we can begin to question how blinded the speaker is with the speaker’s love for the boy.
***
I will argue for the unity of images here.
Long legs, short legs, jogging pants.
And if you sit from where I regularly sit for coffee, you would definitely see boys wearing scandalous shorts (more boxers than casual board shorts).
Thus, long legs could actually mean long legs, short shorts. Haha.
I mean, who sees long legs in long pants these days?
***
Now, unity of images with the eyes of love:
Blindness (or not), seeing (or not), and what we see.
Fact: Love colors what we see.
Almost fact: Love has sight selectivity.
We only see what we want to see.
Or, we try to overlook some red flags because we love the pink that we see.
***
I will also argue for the sounds in this poem.
The alliteration of Beautiful Boy, Long Legs, Long Lashes, Yet You, No Not, Her Hair.
The repeated ‘s’ sound in unSexy Short legS.
If poetry is also music, or should aspire to be music, those should count in favor of this poem.
Not that alliteration alone and all the musicality of words and phrases make poetry.
***
“The Eyes of Love” is not great poetry.
But if you get it, I want you to see how carefully chosen are the images, the words.
And ultimately, how simple the sentences are.
Or even how modern the images are, how contemporary, how 2020s.
***
You may never return to this poem.
You may never really quote from it like you would remember lines from poems of the 18th or 19th century poets.
But in view of the scroll up generation, the poet should be grateful that you finished reading the eight lines that compete with other eight lines (or two sentences) of showbiz chisme./PN
