For Hank, The Bard of San Pedro

Curtains

no curtain call for the poet
and a lifetime spent staging 'the word'

the carefully choreographed
dance upon the page

the symphonic poem
without a single note to rest upon

the three act play performed
without benefit of mise en scène

i am
a magician
pulling haiku from a top hat in white rabbits stead,
a mime
mimicking with metaphor sans the masquerade of makeup,
a matador
fighting a raging bull of a fecund imagination nay flesh

save these limbo lit platitudes of self aggrandizing plaudits,
the bard can only wander a caliginous backstage of years,
forever awaiting the roar of, "Bravo!",

only in the end to take a final lorn bow out of this world,
leaving beholden and a tergo the solitary audience of the mind