the best metaphor ever:
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;"

—William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2/7[1]
-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
for Ernest L. Gonzales,
an overdue uncommissioned tribute

~
mined the meta data,
mined the meta world,
for the meta~for,
the truth serum ether
that gives me a breather,
turns out Willie's
meta-rumination
spot on, the boy's dotty
meta~ruination

no longer my eyes see
your eye test chart lettered reality,
tears of alpha~poetry all I got,
cloudy visionary
with wordy meatballs reigning,
charting a schooner's course,
on a Texas-sized ocean of poetic reality

police took away my licenses.

illegal for me have both,
they, city~proclamation proclaimed,
driving and poetry~striving simultaneously,
dangerous for life and limb,
claiming I drove like
I was in a poetry slam video game,
had to explain I was trapped
in the world of poetic-reality

where the alpha~words
afloating in the atmosphere,
imagery balloons preventing
crystalline vision,
so one or the other,
this world of mine,
the world of poetic reality,
is my baggage carried
and a foot in both
worlds  be word dangerous for global health

ticketed for doing 85+
in the left poetry fast lane,
judge disallowed my only excuse,
mentally composing multiple haikus,
and needed my fingers and toes to do
syllable counting

now you know why
I write poetry on the bus

no, the kid kids you not,
the only arrest on record for
poetry-composing intoxication
under the influence,
while operating an
auto~mobile ma~chine

Went to the bodega
for some late night vanilla swirl,
the immigrant behind the counter,
at 2:00 am, gave me my change
in tales from Bangladesh

late for work,
took me a fat taxi,
the driver, a city life comber~climber,
asked credit or cash,
and I said kind sir,
you do me great credit,
if a poem in Urdu
you would recite in lieu of payment

now you know why
I write poetry on the bus

So, my dear Ernest,
life is our poetic reality,
you are the best ever metaphor,
the one poets keep stealing from
each other,
at the intersection
of our eyes crossing

in fact,
ole Willie stole the world's most famous
metaphor's inspiration above,
when me and he,
once pub crawling,
we disagreed if a certain door
was the pub entrance or the exit,
and the next day
in a burst of
Poetic Reality,
he composed-stoked stole them words,
in a hangover haze

*so the poet point be this:
we may live in and of this world gritty,
but the only show
we ever know'd
was turning life
into the poetic one

Please retain this document as proof of your induction.**


you are an inductee,
part of the tinkering crew,
high giving, high fiving
globally is your locally!

we know where you live,
Google mapped and sleep kid-napped from under that
shady radiata pine tree

more than sufficient,
your poetic revelations,
to know the you and the where-hereabouts of the
lives you handle with
wondrous word-care.

care taken, if you want hide deep,
but to late for thee and our world,
your name on the roster
of poets by night,
tinkers, soldiers, and some who tailor
poems bespoke for the ones who
dare not reveal their true (s)elves
in the words they write.

but you do.

so the
ticK tocK
(never forgot the Special K)
of your clock
synchro us
so too late,
we can call you anonymous,
if that be your preferential suffice,

If that makes you happy.

but what we need to know,
already planted by you,
in our soiled heart,
growing steadily cotton-higher.

When you are ready,
you will dispense with
your leafy nom de plume,
tell us what we don't need to know,
tell us what we already knew,
three boxes checked,
you are
poet, wife and mother,
suffice suffice suffice
the three stripes thrice
sewn on your skin,
inductee into the army of the
fly-by-night,
word~tinkers

guess you can say,
you are a tacker now,
tacked onto this crew,
watching over its
individuals,
therefore, say no more,
but write
a poem a day,
that, your tinkering dues.