Once, I thought,
Love is the answer to everything.
Love, is like great homemade Borsht;
and all of the other problems, Nothingness
Eternal Recurrence, Dread, Speculations
about Simulacrum and Simulations,
Preformativity and all et cetra et cetra’s…
were just fatty parts of beef, to be discarded:
chew a bit, and spit ‘em out into a side-plate.
But my Mind galloped through Heraclitean rivers
undermining such a Platonic Borsht,
proclaiming: tastes change! And what at first boils,
soon simmers, then thickens—grows cold!
(And who can eat, really enjoy, Borsht everyday?)
Soon I found my Mind running mad like a blue duck
fleeing lightening rods being thrown, thrown, thrown
without remorse! The duck quacked: look!
The Borsht, splattering out of the window
channeled through an alley past the pigeons and wooden crates,
down through the sewer grates where Dante, Hades
Ninja Turtles and Indiana Jones sat among rats and snakes.
Now my assumptions always assumed Love to be
The last hope; a refuge, a resort—what nouns!
Surly then, I thought, love is not at all like Borsht!
What else could it be? Perhaps, my synapses had crossed—
perhaps, I forgot the liquid glaze of sunlight
squinting in the black puddles after the rain;
but surly such fleeting glimpses are not worth
marching through this december ice?
And what then of the rotten stench rising from the gutter?
How did such delight turn so ravishingly repugnant?
I’ll never drink Borsht again!