He is grey-whiskered furniture, a pub fixture;
akin to the ashtrays and rickety seats
frequently occupied by bickering students.
'What is poetry?' they asked him one inebriated evening.

+++

He thinks back to some long, hazy hour
when a glass of bourbon sought its six brothers
and a vast expanse of blank paper confronted him.

'There is purity here,' he mused,
'it would be barbaric to taint this beauty
with crude splotches and scribbles of ink.
Far better to leave it clean.'

The bourbon gave him a clarity of thought:
the unmarked parchment was perfection,
a masterpiece of condensed meaning;
a post-modern wet-dream of unfettered potential.

+++

'What is poetry?'
                         He emptied a thoughtful pint
and then, with reverence, placed before them
a pristine page from his notebook.