A Poetic Mess

( On the eternal non-sequitur of Prose Poetry ) The mess on the passenger side floor of my dodge van is prose... or poetry? The battle rages! Are we dialectical heirs, or hairs? "The cross or the cross hairs". Carrol said that. "He was awake a long time before he remembered his heart was broken". That's Hemingway. "A rose by any other name". Shakespeare, of course. A poetic work in the making... A poetic mess! Of all, only the half-drunk bottle of Merlot taunts me to exhume it. The rest are content to be casts off of a crippled civility, becoming themselves reminders, of the broken heart that names them. As for me, I smoke life-shortening cigarettes in the sun-damaged van, drink blasts of black Merlot in the shadows hush, and somewhere, in the midst of these confusing conspiracies, value oscillates- a shame-faced moon wanes. Some draw to the light. Others, the flame!