Friday, March 25, 2022

In the Delicatessen of Giants (Dedicated to poets I know and aspire to)


In the delicatessen of giants

I am the processed sliced turkey

The holy baloney of poetry

Chopped liver

 

Let there be potato salad that knows no end

Creamy and chunky at once

Celery, pimentos, chopped egg

Mayo that goes out for the longass long haul pass

Brings back lunch on a shining deli tray

Morsels of wry wit, verbal shenanigans

Accounts of the beauty to which our lives may attain

Anecdotes of events gone hopelessly, hilariously astray

 

My words are merely a sip stolen 

From the wine glasses of literary tzaddikim

Wisdom procured, fire of the gods

I have watched their loving placement of nouns

Their gorgeous adjectives, metaphors so easy

They seem to have slid off a greased skillet

 

Their verbs are potato knishes

Fluffy omelets, kugel, tea biscuits

They put their hearts on the line

To save sorry souls such as mine

With our little paeans to the mundane, the minutiae

Missing the mark completely

 

Someday,

I will nail that big friggin’ Reuben sandwich

That monster corned beef

A poem lean and mad as a manic plotzing yenta 

Thick rye bread, yellow mustard

A fried egg planted smack on top

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