Every movement forward is glum
The past ages of sorcerers
Carry sticks to the dungeons.
Mystics for the cosmetic industry
Victims of broken doors
Pallor winds itself around fingers
Colors the house blue
Puts the moon in a half-circle
In the gray sky.
Poverty mistakes beauty for
The revulsion of flesh.
It paints pictures in the reflections,
Drives in the sand of rats,
Carries an offering for the sake of an offering.
There is no change from one generation to the next.
Every family member is scared.
The tired, maudlin, tapestry
Of hopelessness remains
Stagnant, conflicting, and empty.
Kisses are for the beautiful
Or the witty.
The rest of us sit alone.
The beer hall smothers
The glistening night
In the delusion
Of questioning life.
Even lights at the fork of a tree
Limbers not one moment.
Saturations of the thin lines
Of ink bleed into an impassioned
Exercise of disorder.
I know no other Hieronymus Bosch
Except these squiggly lines,
The black and white flitter of time.
Each cup is a reflection of our
Mental notes that promise no separation.
At the party, our conversations
Are cruel. Projections of ourselves
Sitting on the stool.
There is nothing left of this clamoring
Participation, except that the eye gate
Sees.
Bumblebee and gold,
Old Mr. Government tired on a
Chair
Paul Revere and a dog by his
Chair.
Each stick of dynamite
In the chaotic lair
Draws the gunfire of hope.
Down the dungeons of hell
America’s patriots
Scheme and conspire,
Like Jackson Pollock
With shrapnel.
In every allegory of the self,
Pigs eat at the trough,
People lick each other,
And a small blue vase with baby’s breath
Covers the pavement.
By this time of night Klimt’s
Two lovers have passed out
On a table just beyond the
bartender.
There’s nothing to say of this
But that the last tender
Moment is a drunken stupor.
“Just give me a bottle,”
The stranger says.
And the white freed man
Ponys up to the stand.
I’ve seen this reference to the impressionists:
The orange cat, barkeep, and the glass.
In one man’s face is the celebration
Renoir or Gauguin, and perhaps Seurat,
But in his face I also see the digital
Revolution, that glitch in a video and more lit trees.
This is Trius, my friend in the beer garden,
Although she says:
“With Ulrike and Celeste.”
The mission in these eyes is money,
For in the past of each replica
In the haze of modernity
Is how every culture is smothered?
That long red line
Is a sad exclamation point
As the iconography floats.
Each charismatic portrait
Gives no birth.
Relationships are terminable,
Disclosed and open to interpretation.
I have shadowed you.
Put my hand as far back
Into you as you could take
And it was evil.
Bartering my single shape:
Limbless, phallic, and
Predatory.
Musings 