The Greatest

Poetic pugilist,
writing poems
on opponents’ faces
of paper and papyrus,
with fists, clenched and padded
and wrapped in leather
like notebooks packing punches.

Float like a butterfly,
sting like a bee,
hands can’t hit
what the eyes can’t see.

War is something more
than a photo opportunity
for Elvis Presley
in his G. I. Blues.
Something about killing
strangers that never uttered
a racial slur, never hated
or enslaved men
with different color skin,
wasn’t worth keeping
that championship belt,
was worth being called coward,
worth taking a stand.

Float like a butterfly,
sting like a bee,
hands can’t hit
what the eyes can’t see.

And Parkinson’s became that
invisible enemy
a brain disease to battle
futilely and eternally
as emotions lose their nuance
to a blank face,
dressed in the flesh
of the greatest boxer
who ever lived,
the dog that made thunder afraid,
thief of Superman’s cape,
only man to ever make Godzilla cry
one hand tied behind his back.

The Nostalgia Awakens

Not a moon, a projection screen,
a bellows pumping light
back to darkened eyes,

a breathing apparatus for those
grown so tired of life
they’ve forgotten how to live.

My heart becomes a tiny fist
with a lightning bug trapped,
tickling the pink palm inside,

leaving its insect smell—
that pungent, licorice-like odor
as it squirms free and flies.

For a while I believe it,
that coincidence can propel adventure
and love can be defined,

that actions are anchors of intention
holding us, binding us together.
I want to believe it still,

but the cold luminance of artifice
waits like lingering frost on the pines,
hints of the winter to come,

memories of childhood
carried like precious fire,
one that must be lit again and again

to rekindle my mind
before the wick is burned gone
and I’ve forgotten why

my throat tastes of smoke
in this black tunnel of stone,
a darkness convincing my eyes they’re blind.