Melting away the crystalline snow underfoot
I spread crystals of salt
Scattered across the icy walkway.
Overhead Bohemian-glass icicles
Hang like stalactites
Like for the tenuous Damocles.
My beard is frozen, encrusted in the blizzard
But indoors soon I'll shed my layers.
And sit to warm my throat
With a bit of Scotch whisky
No ice in mine, please.

White frosted trees
Outside our glassy windows
Do you dream of electric lights
Hung upon your bows
Patterned papers
And corrugated boxes
From your distant cousins
Placed around your trunk
And your only drink
A pale tinny water from a cup
While the sweet elixir
Gathered by your roots
Becomes a distant memory

Ringing in the years
Ringing in the ears
Wringing out the fears
Writhing in our tears
Wrinkled in our years
Winking at your dears
Wishing for some seers
Would that they saw beers
Waiting for me nears
Would raise a glass in cheers.

Melt into me
Caramel and salt
Pine sap into quicksilver
Fog dissolving in volcanic lava
An alchemy discordant and electric
Makes an ore of iron sing into steel
A green copper ingot shine into bronze
But discarded I am left as detritus and debris, a cold abrasive ****
Among the twisted forms of the ideas never formed
Far away from the shaping hammer and anvil
The bellows there that only draws
Pulling away the last of the heat
And unidentifiable melted figures
Are each there somewhat me
But are incomplete alone

Our headlights out there
In this wet October night
Sink into the cold asphalt
Glowing lumps of coal
Lobbed into a black ocean.

Oh please, not sunshine and 'here I sit" blank-page laments
Season-change ballads and idle-moment thoughts.
My muses are all sedentary and lethargic,
Only speaking up to demand another grape
Fed from dangling fingers.

Sure, the sun is streaming nicely in the window
And a reluctant spring has given way
To summer-like days, as I sit and ponder.
But the tropes and exclaims of 'excelsior!'
Aren't going to cut it this time.

Gold-leafed chaises longues and silver goblets
Are stacked haphazardly on the sidewalk
A pile of plus-sized togae thrown into the mix
A cardboard box of minstrels' greatest hits vinyl too.
The bums are sent packing
And my poem is concluded.

Empty block
Full of everythings
To be carved into something
That was already in there

Finally revealed
It wasn't hidden by the unremoved pieces
But rather by billions of other shapes
That all sat juxtaposed
And each with just as much of a right
To emerge as the chosen shape did

Fragments of The Others
Worthy of reverence
Lay strewn on the floor
They gave themselves
That The One could exist
Those that never were
The unseen