Encounter in the Workshop

I open up the workshop at the end
Of summer, pulled through locks and stops of this
New water-clock that keeps my time with grief,
Sometimes releasing me to fill some lines

With annals from the Roman-numeraled year.
But now, inside this parallel bachelor pad,
A curling snapshot of my brother drops
His jaw—abruptly, straight down cartoon-style—

And with eyes still delighted in the past
Addresses me:
               “Oh hi. I felt you knock
This time. Years back, the door you half-prayed stood
Between us was a mirror—shrouded too.”

“After you left, I couldn’t line you up
Inside my usual pentameter.
I went from juvenilia to BOOM…”
     “Wait, isn’t that no-motopeia? Look,

You made it back, but onto a small page
Of bric-a-brac. A candle glass? “Prezi”?
When all the guys on 103 asked you
To use some of their poetry terms—looked up

That morning on their Bloomberg terminals—
They wanted some real magic from your mort-
arboard, not Gollum’s Treasury
Of Mournful Stuff. You didn’t learn the spells

So you could curl yourself around this dreck?”
     “I grabbed on shiny objects in a grayed-
Out world. For all I lived, my writer’s gut
Was stuck in time, still constipated from

A life of legendary feasts with you.”
     “Your head’s the gray zone: make sure that our voice
Does more than rue lost meals. That’s right: your faint
Superiority was trained up on

My adoring little head; your wordy wit
Built up from all our dipshit banter. Write
Your balding ass off and I might come too.”
The echoes of the mic I had him drop

Fill up that space like a good-natured slap.

Copyright 2015 Joshua S. Jacobs