Kleist in Bed
2023
He smoked in bed and wrote on a wooden slate
brown blue coffee ink tobacco,
His spirit flew faster than his broken hands
And formed stone towers on the banks of cognition
It rose ever higher
It grew heavy and hard
It chuckled at the sculptor's tools
And it looked down on him
From the summits of his mind
His tongue became a stopper
That did not budge
Against which nothing pushed
The world behind his eyes
Was a vacuum and pillars of stone
That held the stopper in place
He wished that the coffee vapors
The smoke or the acrid smelling ink
Could penetrate the vacuum
Could saturate the milk white pillars
Could render one word
That would fall like one grain of salt
Fall and settle in the fat of his cheeks
And stinging force his broken hands
To write one sentence
No architechtonic wonder or
Barricade of byzantine will
But something well-wrought and sturdy
Like a walnut board
Polished, clean, and new.