How contumely clear away the falling autumn leaves, winter is on the way! God Damn! What is it that I can do for you? Sincerely, what tribute can I make for, him, the The poet of our time. Pointedly, what would you do? I mean really what would you do? Ask over some friends, have some tannic wine and savagely cubed cheese. Have some oaf spill wine all over his shirt while his friend chats up the crowds. An inspired tribute indeed. Would you then maybe place his name on a library wall or against an elegant stack of columns in a green square in the park or ordain in his honor the local penitentiary’s infirmary? How indeed? If it were up to me, I would make this fancy meal, the best, most innovative of events for twelve hundred poets! Ask all to raise in toast, one glass of sparkling roses. Inhaling, saying nothing, drinking in the shooting stars of imagined evenings someplace else, we,

all alone among all of our friends.
It would be this silence
that would be the ultimate
honorarium to you,
my dearest,

Rockets, Geoffrey Gatza