I want to die while you love me, by Sonia Larios? Pfft!

After spending most of the day Sunday mocking this poem, I have to admit it has quite a hold on me. I might have to attempt to set it to music or something. Or maybe someone has already!

See, I was planning on presenting the poem, in it's entirety, but as it turns out, if you Google "I want to die while you love me," the whole thing, word for word (albeit, slightly rearranged), is actually by somebody named Georgia Douglas Johnson.

Now what I want to know is, did the Editors of Penstrokes, class of 1990, know that there was some pretty heavy plagiarism going on in their pages, or were they blissfully naive? Or were they dipping into Adam's mom and dad's liquor cabinet? Did my parents' innocent tax dollars fund this travesty?! I demand to know the purpose and the meaning of the whole plot! This seems like it could've been quite the scandal, and I! I with my enquiring mind and awe-inspiring Internet-probing skills, have unmasked the perpetrator (sorry, that's another line from Rhinoceros)! Yes, in just seventeen short years, I solved a mystery no one even knew was a mystery! Sonia Larios, whoever you are!, I deem you worthy of joining the ranks of Jayson Blair, Matthew Lesko, Vladimir Putin, and Michael Bolton! Quite an illustrious group, there: plagiarists, every single stinkin' one of them!

See, because I reached into my boy-crazy little mind and whipped out my own, original piece of crap poem, (I can even tell you the genesis of that poem: when I got the inspiration, where I was and what I was doing and everything. Oh! That's a story for another day, people!) I feel I have the right to be just a tiny bit morally superior. Just for a moment: a second, wait, just for one tiny little space in time... no, wait:

it's gone.

Somehow, when I thought a 16-year old punk kid with the same last name as the boy who used to beat me up in the second grade wrote this, I thought it was pretty ridiculous. Now, knowing that a real poet with other works of art under her belt penned this poem somewhere in the vicinity of 1903, well. I have way more respect for it. Come on, everybody, say it with me!

I Want To Die While You Love Me
BY GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON (Who Will Never Be Sonia Larios; and, vice versa)

I WANT to die while you love me,
While yet you hold me fair,
While laughter lies upon my lips
And lights are in my hair.

I want to die while you love me,
And bear to that still bed,
Your kisses turbulent, unspent
To warm me when I’m dead.

I want to die while you love me
Oh, who would care to live
Till love has nothing more to ask
And nothing more to give!

I want to die while you love me
And never, never see
The glory of this perfect day
Grow dim or cease to be.