Eyeshine Part 5

At times, he subst.i.tuted a remarkable likeness for his kith and kin by dumping calloused cus.h.i.+ons, too long cousins of the diaper rash effect bunions, corns, carbuncles eager to roam the padlocked sockets between distant fibula and tibia.

Poor femur, of course, was outraged against carpals and the growing phalanx arrangement of distant phalanges.

Even the metatarsals were girdled in righteous indignation committed against their person by a maverick masquerading in pelvic insubordination.

Altogether the body contains 206 bones.

It is rumoured none contain a giant of his capacity, notoriety, or effect.

48, 49

TO SIT ARRAYED

To sit arrayed and task consumed by the edge of a window, the world as fire stepping free of winter's stain, jutting fingers of light to a bas.e.m.e.nt ledge then allowing their foggy movement to displace dust's circle as it has come to be known over the last five months, is to come as near as possible to the brink of private sanity.

50

SILVER COINS

Seen the wh.o.r.es in doorsteps, slack, crouched as packing crates behind their quiet wardrobe lamps, inset like a skeleton's crown there to bend our will, provide pa.s.sageways to power and suggestion; the winding entrance to rouged light flickering with powdered flesh yellow of gold, then black to ivory a frightful circus in a palace of turn within the grate of execution.

51

SENTRY

In Edvard Munch's painting, The Scream, eyes are grouped as discs ? almost rotund arches, much as suns breaking over an eclipsed wall.

Hollows, jittery the bridge a creamed escape careening the soul madly backward a pastel gathering sky - water rivulets where two solitary, graven figures seem indulging a flaccid, breaking stream.

52

THE POTATO EATERS

The potato eaters - grim, weathered souls wrenching a meal from sandy waste.

The dark toil lined ridges carried from their fields to each human face, dim, pale light as shadowy as lives eked out upon this stoney rash of soil.

Brows, a murky legend of overwork - deflected hope, seasons up in the smoke of a potato boil.

53

THE a.s.sIGNATION (PONS ASINORUM)

Many devils are in woods, in waters, in wilderness and in dark, pooly places ready to hurt. . . people, some are also in thick, black clouds. ? Martin Luther

. . .Masaccio to the Florentine Renaissance but a naught- every man the same, St. Francis the same as a Jack the Ripper.

their rosy surfaces filled.

Like an Old Testament curse he is loosed upon the earth.

Ecking out his pound of flesh delivering misery in sordidness, he parboils the land.

A modern day Tantalus up to his throat in burning lies, his death is to live, in the contemporary sense, the thousand cuts- to bury the skies as a dread Caiaphas into the contradiction, the snares of his being.

Measure for measure his blond mane, pale scarf are hallmarks of the doomed Dutchman searching out the Coromandel; like Cain stumbling upon existence, he hearkens back to the original Murderer, has sold his inheritance for a pittance and by doing so has ridiculed the human condition with his life charged obscenity; his blond beast scowl curdled about respectability's neck, his fang tussled face a menacing white cigarette, the soul imprisoned jailer to his teeth, breath and brain.

54

HAUNTED CHILD

In the dark of wedlock nightly sky, the wither of hope and estranged replies, cause a white face to flicker with transparent eye, calumny of purpose to slowly die.

55

TRIANGULAR TRADE

I would watch him lifting another drink from the fridge, joke about the connection with a triangular trade - bedroom to kitchen fridge, then to the bathroom - only to repeat the cycle not knowing such comments scratched his eyes climbing through the window for escape.

56

CASTING ROCKS Merely on edge, the wharf in bad light clinging to water's ledge - a loon from afar the Woods closing with each sound.

Casting rocks toward moon's glare lapidations laughing back, the treacle of warm night coaxing fire's glowing might.

Sudden, oceanic wilderness breathless in barked silence - and camphor to keep the flies at distance, the anch.o.r.ed boat like a prison s.h.i.+p dallying on the waves, brambles & underbrush sunken wet sand, abundant berries rasp in thickets - the cottage like a jar closing for the night.

57

BRUSHSTROKE

On rue Vincingetorix, a Paris hovel in a garret of cold - Gauguin enchanted serpentine colours, the medium of a brushstroke from a paltry primitivism.

Rue Vincingetorix, cloudy haze sun as billowing plaster, neatly laps sc.r.a.pes clean the bereavement of a man's pain.

58

MAN

In the old air by his rocker, a silent trapeze of thought suspends an aging man.

Each movement as of the katydid droning - a monologue with the past; a buzz escaping across still, warm air.

Elsewhere, cicadas whittle about the octogenarian heat.