Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

Ripping off a bandaid doesn’t paint the right picture. It’s more like taking a couple of perfectly unique pages from two completely different books – maybe one an intellectual mystery, and the other a soulful romance – and expending an entire hot glue stick binding them together so that the only way to engage in an exercise of violent separation would result in catastrophic metamorphosis of flittery bits of plasticky paper flying everywhere. You’d then take this novel composition, now like the Latin on a penny, and bury it under the earth for a thousand years to pinch and squish and crimp under a millennia of sediment deposition until, finally, they might resemble an indistinguishable sheet. Then, and only then, would the phrase “ripping apart” suffice. But no longer is it possible to sunder page from page, a reverse alchemy of paginal compatibility; instead, a tear creates a pair and each new leaf retains the fabric and the fiber of the other. See, the bandaid metaphor just doesn’t do it justice.

Get to know the poet:

1) What is the theme of your poem?

This poem is about the feeling of being torn away from a loved one. There are varying intereprations of what specifically that means, so I'll leave it at that.

2) What motivated you to write this poem?

Past experiences tend to provide excellent source material.

3) How long have you been writing poetry?

I've been "writing" for many years, but honestly, poetry is newer for me. It stemmed from a desire to take what I'd learned drafting persuasive policy and messaging pieces in my previous life in government and harnessing that skillset toward an expression of values and human experience - and also, it's fun for me!

4) If you could have dinner with one person (dead or alive), who would
that be?

This answer will definitely change next week, and then again in a month and so on and so forth. But right at this very moment, I'd say an ancient Sumerian king. I've been reading through some literature on the history of cuneiform and Babylonian culture, and something about speaking with someone from thousands of years ago, as humanity was just starting to come together into cities, just sounds so interesting to me. I'd bet I'd be surprised at both the similarities and differences we share (a paradox, I know - but it reminds me of traveling abroad and witnessing that contradiction first hand).

5) What influenced you to submit to have your poetry performed by a
professional actor?

It just sounded like a neat thing to do, honestly. Additionally, as a new artist, I felt this could help promote my work.

6) Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?

I'm working on two books at the moment!

7) What is your passion in life?

Wow, talk about opening Pandora's Box in a single question! I have a really long answer for this that probably doens't fit the venue, but I'll get into the nitty gritty of the idea in both books I'm working to finish.