kid_hideous

From the Museum of Lost Art



*

In the gutter, above the grate

the "Umbrella Lays,
Single Discarded.
wing of a broken polyester angel

two weeks later, returning
on the way back from work, realizing
that's no umbrella at all

*

"Fringed,
with Static.

one moment frays the next
weaves it
self from selfsame.

*

"This at Least He Knew Not.

to have half a
heart to speak
of these & these what the eyes
when still
closed see
what the grill-scarred dis-
stilled heart
beats, after all the cigarettes
and beef, amidst the milk- and the
tarweed, he said, "I don't worry
for your mother and you boys
when I'm gone and when
I'm anymore


*

all art's
about

about
about
a tub of Oos
a bout of tears
a tube of tars
a tub of rats

stars' tall u-boa
stars' tall baobab
taut ball's a-raw
about Sartre's
alas la la
all art's bought

*

he
plucked the heart
string
and watched his subject
tarantella
to the inaudible tune
thinking
of the time he was thirteen
and bitten
in the moist and musky dark
of the barn
trembled taut his wiry body
twanged toward
still, tongue-choked to silence,
till Father found him
and diamonds swelled and dangled fat
from needle-tip
then sang along the staff of veins
as he watched
his subject play its soft brown viol
body round
and round its twitching prey encased
in soft grey
cocoon impatient to birth
its liquid
innards he thinks he wishes he
could

fly

*

Leaving? Who said anything about leaving?!

I think, in fact, that I've realized I need this place more than ever now. If for no other reason, then as a release valve. There are things I can all too easily forget about myself, what with the 9 to 5, the practically-wife, the nights in, that this place reminds me of.

The other day I got the smoker's nightmare ultimatum: quit, or we're through.

Every battle taken up in a relationship is carefully planned before hand. You shore up all your resentments, till a moment, an incident, gives vent, like a needle opening the taut-stretched rubber flesh of a balloon, to all the built-up pressure. But an ultimatum like that hardly requires any arguments in support of itself.

What can I, the smoker, say? "You really want me to be healthy?! Damn you!"

And yet I wanted so badly not to have that fight.

Now, if I don't stop smoking. It'll look like I left her for the cigarettes.

It's too bad Camels never put out.