When Writing

Young, eager writers sit before keyboards and notebooks
without aid of dictionaries or classics.

Monochromatic ideas cling to the little, gray moths
that spiral up through the clear atmosphere-
toward the celestial bodies. Cancer slices down
to cultivate the bones of old men and breasts of young women
as the shattered wings of Rousseau and Kant flutter vaguely.

Frogs fall from sky-
dinting the hoods of luxury sedans on their way to Hell.
Tangled pieces of metal – streaked with crimson -
along the parallel tracks that disappear into the horizon.
Smoke drifts lazily, playfully from burnt out buildings,
abandoned wedding presents, and defiled coffins.

House perpetually sinking into swamp.
Baedeker forgotten on steps of the green and white chapel.
The A written within the very stars.
Dead body, bruised at the neck, tangled in the bush-
The doctor’s brother.

Dictionaries revolt, migrating down a
mythological river whose name we cannot look up-
laying out in the sun on a beach in Brazil,
burning in the cobbled streets of Berlin,
singing in Camelot (it’s a silly place).

Drab figures slumped before keyboards and notebooks-
without their dictionaries or classics.