Entombment
(Hermann Nitsch, drawing)

What became of me
is what I had always been
a threadbare skeleton
entombed in the skin
of a dying man now dead
among those others
who like myself
practiced the darkness    
of the death we lived
my flesh became the feed
for time and ants
my bones interred
in wailing catacombs                                                                  
my soul and viscera
in canopic jars--
here I lie
as I had lived
in my sarcophagus 
entombed before I died. 

The Heart (Le Coeur)       
(Otto Freundlich, print)

How fast the march
horizon bound
one heart
palpitating scheme of nerves
frayed, quivering in the hand
blood-let, deprived of air
how soon the drumbeats stop.

The Painter in Bed
(Philip Guston, painting)

The painter dreams of little else
but paint
the flashes of his brush
like so many purple sheep
crossing an orange meadow
in the dark
where yellows and blues
whites and reds
bleed to make a mockery
of sleep
and how the straightest lines
can bend the meaning of a metaphor
as if it were the light
around the sun--
he smokes a cigarette
he wanders in his dreams
and wonders
where his gift had gone.

It’s Not Easy Being Green
(Tom Marioni, drypoint)

Too many ways for green
to be
too many leaves
and so much grass

so many choices
from emerald and jade
to malachite
and August peridot

a planet so green
that it shimmers blue
both ripe
and rotting at its core

like an apple
a lizard
like the envy
that comes with golden age

where the sun shines green
and a blue-green shadow
follows you
in a tropical sea:

it’s not easy being green
in a world less verdant
and less alive
than it might seem.

Equals Infinity
(Paul Klee, painting)

Of nothing less
nor more
than light itself
and the sum
of its particles
around a figure eight
give or take
but little if anything
more nor less
infinity equals itself
what it is it is
and/or was
and/or will
as it unfolds its wing
as if it were
the arc of a bird
as it skims the waves
of a more infinite sea.