ODE TO THE AMATEUR BOXER,
from his inexperienced Co-Manager/Hype-Man


My Friend,
Hobby Nomad,
Fellow Fisherman of Salacious Sensationalism-
You have cast your line in deep water,
so I'm in your corner manning the net.
The bets have begun and the word on the street
is that you are the underdog,
a stray boxer just trying to avoid the pound.
They're saying the only rounds you can endure
are being served up at the local bar...
and it's waxing my heart cold, it's taxing me,
because i have glimpsed your tenacity,
your capacious heart gone ballistic in the practice of your spastic jabbing.

Practicality will only mock the unorthodox in us.
We must move in a state of Peripheral Training.
Let your opponent think it potent
that you have never locked mitts with the Pugilists.
We will only insist that you are as undefeated as the common cold!

And when you wake up first thing at the crack of 3PM,
And the thrill of The Challenge lingers like magic at the tips of your fingers,
Let this regiment begin with a yawp! and be guided by the dragon
that beats a ferocious heat beneath your dense forest of a chest.
So that when the Hour arrives,
you will rise like a Great White,
bursting from the ocean of your limitations-
teeth bared, body airborne,
to strike! at the glass chin of the naysayers!
And as they shatter they will see a Champion
made from some strange new material...............
A Sparring Artist
conjured from the blank canvas of the Ring.

ODE TO THE ABILITY OF FERTILITY

Fertility!
Fill the rooms and rooms of wombs in our minds
with your density,
your ideas,
your poetic zygotes.
Take us to the places where inspiration wears no condom.
Even when the risk is high
and we could find ourselves creatively venereal,
let us look into the blank eyes of the barren minded
and rejoice in your abundance!

ODE ON ABANDONED FOOTWEAR


Old Cowboy Boot in the snow, where did your partner go?
If it's any consolation I doubt your fraternal twin is getting very far without you.

Your leather pouts now,
but I imagine in its heyday sashaying in a country line dance
thinking this day would never come,
this set would never sun alone...
Perhaps you're pining for the times your owner would discard his articles
but keep you both on secretly, under the covers
for traction when he took a lover...

How can anyone help but digress when we spot such sole-mates divided?

They sneak into our everyday visual landscape like pedestrian yetis,
seen and unseen, spotting the globe.
I once trotted and plotted them as such,
hot on a trail of flip-flop, slipper, moccasin, ugg, shootie boot, puerto rican fence climber,
oxford, welly, stiletto, zapato, chausson, and on, and on...

Until I recognized the familial silhouette of my Uncle on vacation in Israel
crouched along a stretch of the Dead Sea,
photographing a deserted sandal.
We wondered together whether the foot that inhabited this fine shoe
had had the misfortune of being swallowed
by one of the notorious Dead Sea Sinkholes...
30 feet down seems impossibly deep,
lower than the Earth's lowest elevation.

How could we help but digress?

So now I dress my feet and start walking.
Look how playful these two move together,
gabbing in their garb!
I"m on the hunt again,
and I'm wondering,
how many solitary shoes are between you and I, tonight?

ODE TO THE PORT WINE CHEESE BALL


You are the most daring of all dairies,
Roundly gowned in a nutty flamboyance,
yet no less sophisticated to your fans,
While ignorant bands of critics label you gaudy,
a veritable "Liber-a-Cheese" perhaps.

I happily hark to the generous hearts of my Holiday hosts,
Who allowed themselves to be upstaged by your cameo,
A thing most who know them would perceive as an impossible task,
considering the Hostess and her eyes like twin planets
and the Host with his prism of charismas.

But back to you, fine cheese.
You were never intimidated by these,
Instead you weaved your swirls of reds and golds in a polite duet
with our Host's beard
Which moved and reflected light as he spoke to me of pistols and rifles.
The soothing balm of your flavor played an intricate tune on my
tongue that night,
When I found myself accepting an invitation to the firing range.
Maybe it was because i couldn't help but envision you as our target,
the bulls-eye and centerpiece you inevitably are...
If only our ammunition could be an assortment of pecans and walnuts
that we could propel like astronauts to the surface of your atmosphere.

I've been informed quite often
that the Port Wine that dwells in you
is not enough for drunkeness no matter how much I indulge in you,
But I am intoxicated nonetheless.