This piece reads like a page torn from a poet’s notebook—unfiltered, associative, deliberately unpolished. Plahm opens with the eternal question of artistic equivalence: Is Michelangelo’s physical labor more “exacting” than Shakespeare’s mental painting? He refuses to choose, listing the emotional states both practices share (relaxing, exhilarating, calming, exciting) before declaring “Each demands its own Exactness.” Then the poem fractures into fragments: a dismissive swipe at wellness industry supplements, a nursery-rhyme-like line about “Sassy Ass(y),” a declaration that relationships with women should be “extraordinary not ordinary,” and the central thesis—”The act of artistic creation is a renewal. Of spirit and body.” The closing images (honey as nectar, a jock strap as shield, brick-laying as both foundation and bodily function) suggest that creation is messy, protective, and grounded in the physical even when it aspires to the transcendent.

A deliberately raw, experimental piece that prioritizes spontaneity over polish. The opening question about Michelangelo and Shakespeare carries genuine intellectual weight, and the list of paradoxical emotional states (relaxing yet exhilarating, calming yet exciting) captures something true about creative practice. The central declaration—that artistic creation renews spirit and body—anchors the scattered fragments that follow. However, some readers will find the associative leaps jarring rather than illuminating. The “Sassy Ass(y)” line and the jock strap reference feel like inside jokes that don’t quite land outside the poet’s own context. The piece works best as a glimpse into the creative mind mid-process—valuable as documentary, less successful as finished art. For those drawn to Plahm’s more polished work, this offers an interesting behind-the-curtain look at how thoughts become poems.