Winter Collision

Christmas means shopping
Rushing home to cook dinner
The garage is full

Lifting Belly (Insp. by Gertrude Stein)

Today I learned about a woman.
I read about a poet, long dead now
but alive and living in a person I know.
This poet loved language and wrote well
in a style I preferred not to read.
A man I respect loved this poet and he wrote about her
in a style more my own which spoke to me
and sounded vaguely like a girl I once knew; a poet herself
that once told me to write as well.
This girl I knew: she gave me the pot and this man: the seed.
I supplied the soil and the world: the water.
My work blooms now and I think of that girl from my past.
Were you someone else? Were you Gertrude? Was I earnest?

Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.
No, I was always Hemingway but you were never Faulkner;
not like I thought.
You may not even be Stein; like I think now.
This is this.
Violently delightful dinner parties
sung to the tune of empty bank accounts.
No, you are not my competition, just the orientation.
But you have always been represented in my mind.
Ever since you worked to carry drinks in cups.
Drink im ups. Drink hipups.
A news is pressing. You did want me. Say it again.
Strawberry. Oversweet and moist and dangerous.
And if you please. And if they please. And they please.