A Great Artist

A great artist is someone who balances at the end of a diving board
over an empty pool
and does not jump
or back down.

At first the people will think him a lunatic and yell,
“wait, don’t jump, there’s no water in the pool!”
And “Get down from there you imbecile.”

Only the rain will share his dream.

But the artist will stand stoic
And wait,
bouncing a bit in the wind.

Sooner or later people will begin to fill the pool
drop
by
drop.

An old lady will come muttering
with a watering can.
Children will fill pails
spilling most along the way.
A woman clicking by in high heels
will pour out her evian bottle.
A gardener will stretch his hose
far from his thirsty roses and ferns.
Still
the artist will wait.

Boys and girls will splash in the summer heat.
People will begin to smile
and old men will exclaim,
“this will be an excellent pool for swimming.”
Everyone will gather, and the mayor will declare,
“We will fill this pool so the people of our town can swim.”
And they will congratulate the mayor for being good.
But still
the artist will wait.

A few may remember
and say, “the artist made us fill this pool,”
“he is a genius.”
But most will applaud themselves,
stating with the utmost conviction,
“I was one of the first to add water to this pool.
  I drove twenty gallons, twenty miles in my truck.”
And
“I had water dropped from a helicopter
  flying at one hundred feet.
  Quite a marvelous feat.”

And when the pool is full and the first sweaty children
file up before the ladder to the diving board,
Most will call out,
“Move it old man so my son can do a back pectral spin
  off the high dive,”
or something of that nature.
But some will stop and watch,
a hush will spread over the crowd and they will wait
for the artist to finally do his work.

But it does not matter if the artist does the most graceful swan dive
or lands a belly flop.
Of course the people will be disappointed.
They will moan, “he spent all that time up there to cannon ball off
and get us wet!?”

But the artist will know
and will be satisfied.
It may have taken many years through cold and heat,
maybe even centuries.
But the artist achieved his goal
even if no one,
not even he
(in his senility)
remembers.

Man's ineffable urge to kill,
To dominate,

Stood, like a mushroom cloud
On the edge of the desert.

It was
A tree
Rising

Interminably

In the midst of silence

Which the birds know
Too well.

We separated the skin from the chaff
And there was meat

A bloody bowl.

Open wide.

Her hinds were wretched yet aware.

We used her allies
So that they might confess.

Technology progressed
Until it led us here,
With too many tusks.

We got them to rip at her teats
Because the milk had gone

Sour.

We got them to pull out the horns
Because they had never seen so much meat
Their mouths watered and
Saliva dripped into the
Open wounds.

Now she writes
To control the controller.

Discovery

I discovered him again today,
One clenched talon,
A barely recognizable eye socket.

I took the other way to work this morning.
On the way home they were dragging him off the front lawn,
A trail of maggots followed him into the dump truck.

I guess this is what happens when you don't go to work.

Beeched

Waves caress the thinning body of a beached whale
And only the birds know,
As they fly off with blubber in their beaks,
Why this behemoth
Rolled itself on shore.

They laugh
As it drowns
In obese snuffling air.
High pitched cries
Unheard by our ears,

It's flesh,
like stone,
Worn by time.
A Buddhachrist
Knowing the weight of the world,
Or close enough,
To crawl
And bathe itself
In dry sacrifice.

The Old Places

I've been in this place before
Many years ago.
I remember.

The old places
Have an ochre hue
Like a photograph
Left in the sun.
Hard edges
Washed out.

Now

Words are nothing,
Paltry stabs at growing silence.
The deep guttural ache
Where the mind itself
Is the knife which scrapes.
There is no romance here.
There is nothing.
There is nothing.
There is no human being.
No one to type these words,
Only the memory,
Almost unnoticed.

These places have never stopped visiting me.
They make sure I fail,
They watch,
Wait for me to give in
Or become transformed
Into one of the old places.

Cartesian

The shadows of the cars are marked by the rain
Like...

Like nothing.
They just are.

Whenever we do something,
We do it
As if
Being watched.

Maybe we are more comfortable that way.

Therefore God exists.

She was lying candy eyed,
Like a smoke stack in the grass.
I could see up her skirt.
Her blanched legs were railroad crossings
With the
Ding ding ding
Falling down to refuse oncoming traffic.

The guy over there is playing Bob Dylan.

"two guys said this song reminds them
of me"

The cigarette dangles from
Her puerile lips.

One honest expression
Is worth a thousand glances.

Gutter punks drag their drunken friend
To the center of the Park.
Even their dog has too many pockets.

Some comments are made,
Maybe a smile.

I forget,

But the main thing is,
I'm sure it happened.

Diagnosis

In an alimentary cursory study of my left hemisphere the prognosis is bad. It seems I have a callodial hemorrhage on the pituitary gland with complications on subsequent forms of inopial tissue. I am not worried for non invasive therapy, using light diodes, can cure the abnormality. At the moment I am numbing the cranial discomfort with goose sopped rags and rice paper (known to those who practice remedial therapy). One small setback is the constant toe twitches which quickly bore a hole through the big toe portion of my shoe. Despite the price of shoes, Mass Health has been amenable to the exorbitant cost of my diagnostic procedures and the light diode therapy. So no one need worry I am in limbo at the moment but my paradiso is sure to come.