Prose Poem: Farhad Manjoo and a bowl of vegetable steam.

 

They kept jogging

even after stepping on

 the rare Lotis blue,

leaving a powdery smear

on the sidewalk.

 

They were running 

to improve their health

and to generate new

provocative ideas for their

newspaper column.

 

They are Farhad Manjoo,

and nobody else.

Whose impetus impelled

them to run blithely

past a weeping fire hydrant

and park benches morphing

into cows.

 

On, on, they ran;

over hill, over dale,

faster than a typhoon

gale.

 

Leaping over caissons.

Straddling incoherent rhetoric.

Neatly side-stepping chalk artists.

They sped like cheap beer

through the bladder.

 

And then they ran some more.

Up the stairs, into their office

at the mighty New York Times,

and around the editorial board,

blindsiding Paul Krugman, 

Ross Douthat, and

Michelle Goldberg.

 

Down the stairs, out the door,

up Park Avenue -- 

then slowing

slowing

slowing

until they cantered

into Delmonico's

for a bowl of vegetable steam.