Vaudeville Vallejo

...life's the best thing
that's ever been invented...

In Vallejo’s stomach only a few breadcrumbs
to keep him company

as he walks through Montmarte
in search of that elusive word---

sharp but jagged on each
of its four sides.

During his lifetime
so many mistook him for a swordswallower---

blood is poetry, too,
and the heart just a ball of words

which pounds away at the center,
the poem getting

rounder and rounder,
the violence of it so beautiful.