Impede and Be Emptied (A Stand-up Poem)
Must Include: A Pier, Brad Pitt, Admiration, Weeping Willow
Joe Corona was birthed beneath the sun,
his bobbling head an orb of gathered validation
sent as self to descend into intention.
Hardly sooner had he pressed foot into ground
when he began orbiting in curiosity.
Animation had him beckoned to a pier and its breaching,
“Is this what I am to do?”
Each moment a threshold, he must cast himself-
At first into a haze which hadn’t fully dissipated
above a looming water reserve.
He whipped up and above into the glorifying rays of
that first, true encouraging warmth
and rise lends time to fall.
The apex there-in is time enough halted in animation
yet nowhere near that longed-for validation
Gravity suppressed him to begin fishing for admiration.
“Not for nothing!” he admonished, headward
into certain reflective waters
catching sight of himself
just beyond the brink of perturbing mist.
Writhing toward and bracing for embrace
the enlarging, iridescent figure.
He’d thought he’d come to
and many more still disillusioned from the mist
trying to slow the descent
Jostling in the currents where redemption might be sent
cohesively as water can coalesce,
fishing for admiration and self-same to acquiesce
whooping wails of no known degree
as some found movement amply downward into every reverie
Joe followed soundings deep
to where water and earth were mixed
and in the depth of lulling admiration found Brad Pitt whose eyes were fixed
renouncing his former glory and here at last having him pinned
“I cannot move as one entirely
pursued by those who pin me.
I cannot search for my way out as I and my self are cause for envy.”
Joe corona is now a lucky man
to know which parts of himself to keep
and also that near these testy waters grow willows for those who weep…
He could not play it cool any longer! Maddening into the current,
found a wavy limb to tug him back to the light.
He was moved to weep, resurgent in truths he didn’t care to keep.
Reeled toward shore in lasting numbness,
hero Joe had only himself .
Crying atop ballooning croon of beluga tuning truth from neath half-hearted,
“Is this what I am to do?”
Wrapping several branches at once around his neck…
…In through this guise, an away from this world Joe imparted.
