Schrödinger’s Brussels Sprouts

For now
— or however —
I know we mustn’t do the hot and nebulous.
For now
— or whatever —
we need to keep our distance.
And I know it’s the
healthy choice
but I never really was one for eating my vegetables.
You tell me that you never know how the
brussels sprouts
will turn out
they could be
braised to perfection.
But these are just
abstract bite-size
cabbages
in an abstract box
won’t know ‘til I see it myself.
“Schrödinger’s Brussels Sprouts”
you quip

Brass Tax

Hey you,
yeah you with the wall.
I just wanna say how lucky I feel
that, through a combination of serendipity and dorky charm,
I merited a pass throught he brass barrier.
Unwittingly, I entered the company
of a being of immense depth
and range,
capable of profound
tenderness and stony resolve.
Existing as a series of wonderful contrasts between
the adorable and the pugnacious
the playful and the strictly business
flippant and caring
coarse and subtle
extroverted and introspecting --
guarded --
vulnerable.
Hey you -- yeah you with the wall
yeah you with the grin that says more than most people
you with the eyes

you -- yeah you with the mind,
I think I can see you  

Your Grave

I saw your grave today.
Your headstone is a wistfully beautiful tree stump
carved from marble ages ago.
It was once white, dappled with subtle grays in its metamorphic bark,
but the years have spray-coated it in a layer of black,
casting shadows over each ridge, groove, and notch in the surface,
making it seem even more alive.
On the smooth, angled plane that is its top,
two things are carved in relief,
mid-stump – an oak leaf, with two acorns,
and along the curved edge of the cut surface, the words
“My husband”.
I saw your grave today, and assumed that the stump was
a metaphor for your death – cut down in your prime.
At first I was sad, mourned the loss of a man,
but then my mind shifted to the top of this stone stump.
If it is indeed the base of tree, then I can only imagine how glorious a tree it was.
Given the size of the stone, it wasn't an enormous tree,
but a strong, middle-aged stone tree
with many sturdy branches.
This solid marble oak must've stretched twenty-five feet high.
From each well-carved limb
would hang twigs of granite, leaves of mica, and obsidian acorns
all moving and shimmering in the sun and wind
in completely different and equally beautiful ways.
Each fall it would shed treasures worthy of any rock collection.
I picked up a piece of muddy calcite a couple feet away
and set it next to your grave out of respect.
Respect for what a sight that tree must've been.      

Poets Picnic

Poets Picnic

                                                          Two poets walk

 out to the woods as the sun sets                                           

                                                                                    and clouds roll in with warm gusts of spring wind

                                                            two poets talk

about how the air is swollen with the

                                                                                    scent of an incoming storm and how the

atmosphere is one of pure, stark,
natural potential and how

                                                                                    they could both go for some real lightning.

                                                Indulge them – they're poets.

Walking and talking,
one poet hands the other some
Swedish Fish and asks how he feels about 

peanuts and Twix respectively.

                                                                                    They continue talk-walking

 eating candy and philosophizing.

                                                                                    As they chew on

Red-40,

                                                                                    Gelatin, and

 High Fructose Corn Syrup

                                                                                     their meandering stroll asks the world a question,

                                              “What does a poet consume?”

                                                                                    What does a poet consume?

The poets, aware or not, begin answering.

                                                                                    A poet consumes the sound
                                                                                    of wind moving thousands of leaves,

the smell of spring in muddy woodland paths

                                                                                    and turbulent March air,

the cooling warm of southern wind

                                                                                    smoke from smoldering tinder

light filtering through pines

                                                                                    the bass-boom of thunder

the greyscale of a post-sunset forest

                                                                                    places

sights

                                                                                    stories

memories

                                                                                    words

music

                                                                                    emotions

thoughts

                                                                  Twix.

Escape

It was hot

it was confusing

it was safety-danger and flawless-fucked

it was love in some form.

But

We used each other to forget, simultaneously experiencing and creating escapist fantasy.

Together we re-wrote and read New Tolkien among clasped fingers,

between urgent lips, and on soft earlobes.

I traced Escher's spirals on your shoulder-blades and you saw them in my uncut hair.

Our perspectives were warped and novel,

taking twisted cues from del Toro in the films we projected behind dilated pupils.

Emulating Ailey we danced – in walking, talking, sex, & sleeping.

As with a good book series, we'd lose ourselves in each evolving iteration, consuming the fantastic ravenously with no thought to that final phrase.

A Home

It’s three A.M. and I can hear that noise again. The sound that echoes from the ancient heating system in my building. Blips of dripping water combined with the atonal glockenspiel orchestra of twenty-some-odd ancient radiators. They used to keep me awake, but after a year here, I’m not sure I could fall asleep without them -- without them or without the perpetual, rhythmic creak that the tenement exhales every few minutes. “The place has neshama!” according to its owner, Mrs. Storch, a sweet, but jarringly judgemental old Slavic Jewish woman who wears too much makeup and hunches over a bit. Apparently she moved here after World War II. The building is falling apart.

“Falling apart?” she scoffed, in Yidd-tinged English. “A building, especially an apartment building, needs neshama, you know neshama?” she prodded, ruffling her pink, polka-dot, silk nightdress.

“No?”

“Soul, it needs soul, a building needs soul.” she clarified hastily . “A building, a home, needs for to be a -- a -- a -- what do you say as another world for living thing -- a being?”

“An entity?”

“A entity, it needs for to be its own entity. Its own entity with its own quirks and strengths and weaknesses and secrets, just like everybody else. These new steel and plastic towers they build? Nice with their beige carpets and their, and their life-less, pre-made walls and floors. Sure they go up in two months, but no character, no story, no neshama. This place, these floors, those walls, were built by hand and have seen generations, pain, happiness, sad times, Hanukkahs and Christmases, honeymoons, divorces, death, and more sex than any one person can imagine. Falling apart? this place is just maturing like anyone else.”

Shakespeare on Caffeine

Shakespeare & Coffee

Coffee and A Midsummer Night's Dream

Solipsism on Caffeine

Bill and the bean

Blurring the lines 'tween

dream, theme, meme and scene

investigating ever-opening passages

of the meta

nesting microcosms

beautiful babushka poinsetta

the rosetta

stone of modern english

the comedic existential

tragicomic rice and bean dish

a mezcla most rare

shiny foil liter-rare-

y mental trading card

the bard bringing it

hard back basics

the OG no fakes it

Billy Shakes

wakes and stirs the all the souls theatrical

immersing the audience by waxing lyrical

empirically engaging changeling boy trading

cupid-flower waving

lover-exchanging

Fairy-folk eschewing reality

while I view this causality

through a mind's eye

amped on a strong cup of joe

so thoughts flow

and they grow

ever-expanding

ever-exploring

ever-pervading

never ignoring

the smallest details presented in text

by the wordsmith of Stratford

cunningly constantly coarsely

punning 'bout beauty, life, love,

but mostly sex.

All Melange Français and no lait

makes Jack's brain play with

notions of genre recursion

bean potion's granting full immersion

in Will's world of wordplay in his plays within plays

and the insane poetic vein in the amazing maze of allegory

in a story with such purpose told without stage directions

instead predilections of director and actor deciding

presiding over what is to be or not

casting their signature spotlight

on what does and does not fit right

in their quote un-quote new view

of a masterpiece that moves through

time and place changing face

leaving traces of its cultural impact

craters of genius in the intellectual landscape

fact: the man brought at least fifteen-hundred new words to this language

fact: the reason his plays are cliches is 'cause they originated it

quandary: can any art be interpreted through a lens un-tinted by his work?

ponder with me without him

whether the terrain of literature would wear its signature sly grin

whether Gogo and Didi would've waited

whether Behemoth would've bated Stalin with Woland

whether Willy Loman would've been insured

whether Woolf would've incurred fear in George, Martha, Nick, & Honey

whether the Eckleberg eyes would see

or J. Gats would be

while I agree it is of course a matter of flutterbys and wind and their effect

I conject a direct connect between the cinder-blocks placed by his works

the mortar spread with each verse 

and the present holistic existence of the written word.