Word Play

That whole contradiction
between being and becoming.
Poor Rick, stuck in Casablanca
only to remind us that a sigh
is not a kiss, nor is having
to choose between them
a fundamental thing in life.
Time does not just go by,
it whirrs past us 
like the winds off 
a Saharan bluff.

The consistency of change
smooths our character,
polishes our personalities,
settles our psyches. 
I, like the anti-hero 
in the gin-joint of life,
want nothing more than 
to love with abandon
on a Paris balcony
or at the corner dive,
in downtown Inglewood.