How Many Metaphors Can Tap Dance On The Head Of A Cabbage
Because mortal being is just the length of a sonnet
therein are love and death contained.
Not much has changed since Petrarch or Shakespeare—
a few more syllables to love or realize that death
deals the hands and the house always wins.
All trains stop at Fourteenth Street not before,
not after, always the last stop where like it or not
one steps up and into the world above.
Perhaps love took eight lines and death only six— love triumphant,
you disembark on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday into the outdoor
Green Market, midsummer, everything free— the food, the flowers,
unlimited wifi, the perfect shaded bench always waiting— or else death
has won the line count, it’s the Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday of desolation,
benches drowning in fresh pigeon poop, nodding junkies and their used needles.