Abstracting Love
For Darwin John Adeniyi and Irad Levering
A difficulty is that abstract nouns
Like “music” are both abstract and then not.
Petrushka and such characters are clowns,
Shape-shifting in their signatures, a plot
That turns and twists. Their definitions go
Against themselves as mythic snakes might turn
And munch their tails. These nouns in context glow
In coiling changes and in changes burn
Like sublimation. “Tune” as abstract thought
AI did a good job but I feel it failed to show the Petrushka chord in a way that would be clear to the reader; so I stuck in a YouTube link earlier in the sonnet.
When heard is like the smoke of jazz in Bourbon Street.
A Gershwin symphony ravishes “ought”
And “should.” Abstraction is an off-beat beat.
Vanilla is an abstract term until
It touches tongue. That yields soft thrill.
© Phillip Whidden 
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