WELL DONE! ODE ON INDIVIDUALISM’S TWENTIETH CENTURY TRINITY OF CHAMPIONS by Jake Sheff

Ode on Individualism’s Twentieth Century Trinity of Champions (an Acrostic) by Jake Sheff

If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

I.

Ever the scientist, all you dreamt

Invented the void, like a Gustav Klimt.

Nazi Germany’s oodles of plans

Surrounded the absence for which it stood.

Then its loneliest sect of one, you stood

Erect on that emptiness. (Now, it shines

In perpetuity.) Lit by your saber,

Nihility’s time’s unlovable neighbor.

II.

Assumptions begat so much, but your lines

Undid the most colorable of them all.

Dexterity’s fall into disrepair

Engendered despair, then you banged your tabor…

Nullity’s no unlovable neighbor.

III.

Agita aimed at the general will

Reveals nothingness ten times more than fear

Ever could. But you had arousal’s ear…

No wonder a womb’s-worth of knowledge fell

Despondently after you tossed your caber.

Titillation’s awe’s unlovable neighbor.

Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and US Air Force veteran. He’s published a full-length collection of formal poetry, “A Kiss to Betray the Universe” (White Violet Press), along with three chapbooks: “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing), “The Rites of Tires” (SurVision) and “The Seagull’s First One Hundred Seguidillas” (Alien Buddha Press).