House brands rock
They do the job
They meet the need
if not the want

Knockoffs rock
You can’t tell what’s what
unless you’ve seen
real more than once

Counterfeits rock
Maybe they’re cheap but 
a cheap watch tells expensive time
at least for a little while

With that Bentley grille
on your Chrysler
you oughta drive it
like you stole it

Oughta steal something
The way you have the sizzle
without having the steak
oughta be a crime

but it’s not
It’s all for the best
in this best of all
probative worlds

He is nostalgic
for the thing he used to call
his “imagination”

which has devolved
into a game
of pickup sticks

in which the sticks
are splinters of things
he thought long ago 

and picking them up
is harder harder and harder
as their sorrow is heavy 

as trees felled
by deep earthshaking
and wide airbending

that no longer grow
but lie there in random patterns
where they fell