The soap opera organ announces
what we can hardly bear to hear.
A metal-aproned matron
summons the skin ribbons
she left on the seat of a Galaxy 500,
circa 1969. Her tremolo
is a casual torture. We mistake
her voice for a choir of a thousand
veiled mothers and wobble dutifully in
to an Easter dinner of wood duck and greens.
There are no roses
around [...]
A man with a backbone
is dangerously exposed.
This explains a shortage.
.
image © Tony Karp, Techno-Impressionist Museum
writing © joesmith, 1998
The Origin of Species
The Birth of Tragedy
The Ascent of Man
The Subject of Tragedy
The Art of Telling
The Story of Art
The Art of Living
The Dehumanization of Art
The Concept of Mind
The Art of Argument
The Character of Mind
The Anatomy of Inquiry
The Identity of Man
The Moment of Proof
The Pursuit of Signs
The Sign of Three
The Thread of Life
The Loom of Language
The [...]
After you’ve gone
All the things you are
Come back to me
It’s almost like being in love
But beautiful
jazz that text
till it sings
till only singing
will diminish it
till ebb exposes that
which only flow has known
stones shells bones
posing as lasting things
memory’s moment knows no present
imagines it is as it had been
it’s this that’s that
scatting riffs best left unsung
till home
in stillness
that absence
this trope
