White Light

Perhaps the barrel has

Unwound

Righty-tighty

Or, it's filled with

Crud

Ream it out with cotton swab and

Hooch

The teeniest of screws, the ones that clasp the

Tip have

Wiggled loose

Grab a microscopic tool and

Snug them down

The nuts that clutch the wire in the socket

May be

Lax

The grip a trifle

Slack

The prongs may wobble in the plug the wire may be

Nicked the body cord fershlugina the reel perhaps

Verclempt

All plausal possibilities…

I think this ample impetus, collectively

To learn the gentle art of armory

Induction

When fencing Otter

My feet try to

Bounce, to

Flow

Attempting speed, fluidity

That doesn't live within these

Aging bones

With Tabby

Suddenly my tip's aloft

Contemplating phantom flicks

For which my blade is

Much too thick

Facing the

Hungarian

My gait's a clumsy mimic of his

Levitating glide, his

Seamless segue to a

Disengage and lunge

And so, throughout the salle--

With Werewolf, whacks

With Dormouse,

Bouncing up & down

Why can't I simply

Fence like me?

Be true to

Badger self

Content to tease, and dance, and

Squirm

Instead, my opponents

Hypnotic, or

Magnetic

Draw me to their

Comfort zone

And out of mine

Perhaps I need a talisman of my echt self, my ur-identity

An anchor to my undiluted Badgerosity

Composition

Stubbled thoughts

Captured on

Scattered scraps of time

     A word

     A rhyme

Scribbled on the edges of the

Shopping list the

Catalog the

Phone bill's envelope

Crabbed script interlines agendas from

Forgotten meetings, maps my drifting mind with

     Marginalia

Fragments which I shuffle, seeking

Patterns, matches, places where the meter

     Interlocks,

The phrases

     Fit

Finding, filling

Cracks and imperfections until seamless verse

     Unspools

Unbroken lines

This is how I write

In stolen moments

Lulls between the squalls of

Work & life