Machine Balerina / Suzanne Vega

[yosefm]

This is my first attempt at Perl poetry. I translated Machine Balerina from Suzanne Vega's Songs in Red and Gray into perl. It compiles and runs under strict, but it's pretty long, so please be patient.

# Machine Balerina
# By Suzanne Vega

# First, some definitions:
use strict;

our ($i_am, %you, $your, $we); # get these 'my' out of the way.
my $what = "thrown and received";
my $when = "on somebody's birthday";
my $whatfor = "for tease and delight";

sub soldier_of_tin {
    my %position = @_;
    while ($you{sit} eq 'royal') {
         if ($position{standing} eq 'loyal') {
            return "soldier of tin";
        }else {return;}
    }
}

sub your_phantasy_girl {
    my $parts;
    if ($parts = made_of($i_am, 'puzzling parts') and not $parts eq ('
+fits' or 'starts') 
        and $we =~ /wits/ and $we !~ /hearts/) {return "heard but neve
+r seen";}
        else {return "phantasy girl";}
}

sub made_of {
    my $material = shift;
    if ($material =~ /parts$/) {
        $material =~ s/\s*parts$//;
        return $material;
    }
}

# The ultimate question...
sub what_am_I {
    if (($i_am eq "a thing on a a string to be $what $when $whatfor") 
        and print "goodnight" and print "goodby") {
            return "an afternoon pastime";
    } else {
        my $retval;
        for my $something (
            "a toy on a tray",
            "a soft piece of clay",
            "qween or clown for the day",
            "machine balerina",
            soldier_of_tin(standing => 'loyal') )
        {($retval = ("$i_am, " . &chorus)) if ($i_am eq $something) }

        unless ($retval) {
            for my $something (
                "Mad Magazine",
                "skin trampoline",
                "pin-up pinball machine",
                your_phantasy_girl )
            {($retval = ("$i_am, " . &chorus)) if ($i_am eq $something
+) }
        }

        unless ($retval) {$retval = "your love";}
        return $retval;
    }
        
}

sub chorus {
    for $your ("approval", "persual", "possible refusal") {
        $i_am = "amusing";
        $i_am = "a puppet for your play";
    }
    return $i_am;
}

OPTIMISTIC_RUN:
$we = "equal in wits";
$you{sit} = 'royal';

print "what am I to you? \n";
print what_am_I;

PESIMISTIC_RUN:
$i_am = "soldier of tin";

print "\n\nwhat am I to you? \n";
print what_am_I;

Update: fixed a typo. Thanks, Aristotle.

[Aristotle]

# Bye Suzanne Vega

Where did she go? ;-)

Makeshifts last the longest.