poet’s night

The more words he added to define It,
the worse it became.

So he sat, turkey-fucking smoke after smoke;
mind's eye shuffling through the past and writing hand grasping for the future;
mystic's dialectic working him like a day labourer

Opposite action helped, so he pared and muted and wound syntax in a gossamer web,
and at 4 words and 8 syllables, it rested in an fungible beauty,
bathed in the tired jazz metaphor that less is more

"the first undivided moments"

Close but not complete, he sliced further

"the undivided moments"

then sacrificed the article and stared at the beige page

"undivided moments"

He could take it no further.

6 syllables that pointed to where they came from,
Source

The space between the words birthed paradox;
how could a moment - a thing - be undivided from all other moments - and still be "a" moment?

E pluribus unum made an appearance,
played intellectual whack-a-mole until exhausted,
then followed its own genome to transcendence.

He finished the night's last cigarette,
closed the notebook,
and considered doing the dishes