Take or Leave
Leaf or Leaves
for D.B.A.

what is indicated by your regretting
that we ever met or what we have shared
or are sharing or your wanting what we are
reduced to just friends

indicate a lack of love of art
or an indifference which could
just as easily not mind at all
if Shakespeare's 154 Sonnets
were wiped out of literature
along with his 37 plays
or if Shakespeare himself were erased

indicate such an indifference about art
that it would not have mattered
if what Michelangelo left upon the ceiling
of the The Sistine Chapel and if
Michelangelo also were wiped out
were extracted from the Renaissance

since we are deleting, let's get rid of
Beethoven's Ninth and Fifth

as well while we are at it
and you would not notice
or would not have noticed
let's erase Beethoven's Hammerklavier
and his Pathetique Sonatas

how about Pushkin and everything he wrote
everything he has left us
and how about Tchaikovsky
and everything he ever composed or conducted

would you notice Bach's absence
if he and everything he ever composed
went the way of bubbles a child blew
added to the air, from some soapy solution

what is it that my being in your life
that your being in art, makes inconvenient

what is it that I or we have interrupted
what is it or who is it that you love so much more
than art than us

in addition to having given little or given nothing
you are mean enough, an oaf enough,
to want to take away more than you have contributed

how about all the leaves off trees while we are at it
you do not seem to understand
what is connected to what
where air comes from or where life comes from

what is it that you want to be left with
just do not touch your piece a pork chop I suppose
nothing else is sacrosanct


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2011
11:25 p.m. 20.01.11