Once upon a time, I read that the perfect age for writing quality poetry is twenty-three. Apparently most of T.S. Elliot’s stuff came out then, the rest having to do with prose. I realized January 19ththat I will turn twenty-four in three months, and since I started writing some poems before it’s too late: forty-six poems at twenty-three. I’ll post each Friday until the last week of March, then I’ll post one a day until my birthday on April 30th. Here’s number 10:

Brass statue of Shakespeare pointing heavenward, reading from his text, flat-footed, ready for some poltergeist named Puck to pluck him from his foothold, both feet beneath respective shoulders, pillars of his own earth, pillars of himself. One man wondered what might come to pass if Shakespeare found his way into his own stories, entering into his characters’ worlds, living inside his creation claiming to be who he was – the author of their epic. Characters would never go for it.

You should kill a man like that.