Tag Archives: wallace stevens

CHOCOLATE INDEED

I took
the Emperor to task
over why
there were
no sprinkles
on my ice cream

seemed to me
an example of misrule,
abject discrimination

with which
he did not concur
adding insult
to injury, fuel
to the fire

with a brush
of his hand
simply
             waving
me away

insisting
that I redirect
my complaints, to
the author
of this oversight, a
certain Mr Stevens
legal expert, insurance
executive
somewhere
in New England

and so
I looked for him
in Boston, and
Providence Rhode Island,

all over Connecticut, Delaware
and Maine

not coming up trumps
getting horribly misled
at every juncture,
between
    stanzas

by host upon
host of
impenetrable clues, most
cryptic of metaphors, obscure
intellectual
references
philosophical conundrums
and impossible
spiritual quandries

all of
which I loved
left me
begging for more

and with this
his answer to
my sudden
supreme question

wondering whether
if you sliced
ripple in half
(be it
   with scalpel, scimitar,
or ceremonial longsword)
would it indeed

bleed raspberry
and
   with rum and raisen or
blueberry, strawberries
and cream,
rocky road
tutti frutti
               and indeed chocolate

would the same fate befall?
                same fate befall

and indeed chocolate
same
     fate befall

chocolate indeed!

FLOURISH

with a flourish of the word
I joined an ideosyncratic one
for an icecream
thing
of which he be
the undisputed emperor

the sky above us
a sort  of blueberry gray
to which
we could not
place in any
everyday spectrum

resisting both
Saxon and Latineate phrase
beside which fact,
everything sufficient unto the experience