Pugilistica Poetica

Wrote this in 2008 when a former talented student writer asked me for a submission

I've got phrases whirling and tumbling like a renegade comma,

no solidity, no profundity, just an unbearable urge to say: 

gutter juice, lemony loess, and nun butter.

I scratch the itch. The gloves are on.

Spurned syrupy saccharine discharge?

Don the trunks.

Goofy footed similes wax poetic and grant me the look of a

prize fighter and pugilist of mediocrity

I enter the ring:

all corners and no circles.

Pink tongue nervously probing.

The Max Baer of verse: my opponent.

Dried spittle on my lips from the weigh-in

rife with halitosis telling me to 

Submit.

Lumbering stutter-steps and butterflyed uppercuts

give me pause to smile and take it

right on the teeth

Only revealing enough to get me started,

baring only enough of my soul to be likened 

to a Mennonite skin-flick,

I hit the canvas as solid as a raw potato.

Head reeling, 

I hallucinate.

The past made flesh

dreamy visions of infrequent visits

breathing life passed my swollen lips.

Legs wobbly and unsure like a newborn fawn's,

equal parts blood and beauty.

My lips part, hemorrhaging from the onslaught.

A rattled breath escapes, crooked smile emerges:

footing regained, I swing with Cassius accuracy

and sting with the most deft of bumblebees.

The chorus of me now silenced.

Head pounding and knees quaking from adrenaline...

I can win this round.

Solid shots landing,

Wrists aching, shaking,

Baer tumbles and falls.

I wheel around to my corner.

A watery blur adorns everything, 

Mouth full of shattered teeth

and broken syntax.