Like aspiring surgeons invading the mysteries of corpses
before being allowed to practice their art upon the living
we dissected the muscular strands of Hemingway Joyce
Twain Faulkner even Poe laying them down on the page
like multi-forked pigeon tracks at first a hostile aggravation
dissolving finally into a budding understanding of how this
thing called language worked or might work how it could be
twisted and turned on itself could be given reign to run free
for pages on end like some berserk wallaby or just lay there
exposed bare-boned unadorned unassuming and candid
all distinct yet like-minded styles of writing clearly hitched
to a telltale structure that in the end if judiciously observed
if adhered to without too much Faustian dissent receptive
to the intersecting physics of language thought and logic
all the rewards and treasons in the life of that lowly cliched
everyman might unlock – the joys the horrors the unbreakable
wit as well as the roots that fed his most stubborn tragedies
the unflinching discontents that fueled his hell-bent persistence
all noble goals lost upon us at the time we being no more than
children set to an odious task but sow the seed and one or two
might rise beyond the frustration embrace the scrutable divine
maybe even one day pen a poem in thanks to one who tried.