ainting--
aura light seeping toward
sun-lit crack of day,
the Master's Mona Lisa
in the Louvre
raptured,
luminescence amid aging pigment
steeping about rapt multitude.

Betwixt pit & pendulum,
another canvas--
Da Vinci in a beatific pose
(warm light of the room),
gentle finger pointing upward,
a puzzled crowd
with nowhere to see.

CARNIVAL AND LENT

Jungle, the cave
human reservoir & cistern ... .
quagmire and bog, but no alpine meadow,
fairest glance of goodness in
soiled wildflower under winter snows.

Pebbles into a cesspool,
our sometime passions alive
in the outback where honey-fuelled
ants soothe enemy bones.

My blood, tempest-whipped,
ardour drawn to the surface
fathom marks the depths
sees a spectacle on the roads
queues/Carnival & Lent,
unbridled raw and raging.
Jesus would have nails.

Poison darts,
liana and mangrove sounds
with footsteps in the distance
the blow-gun or bolo knife
attache case / cellular phone ...
"I'll kick your teeth down
your throat, professionally
speaking." Nine to five fecal
beings perform the toilet-bowl flush.

Tsetse fly with design--
sapient, sand paper rough
along the edge, dry rot to the core.

Plague rats cluster in a feeding
frenzy sampling tidbits.
Swirl of the bull fight,
colour and scope, only
its a supermarket, freeway.

Wide angle, wild angel,
Umbrage of the uppercut.
Tough-mindedness, singleness
of purpose, the glacial speed of
fairness along the sorted, sordid
circles of Spitsbergen.

Our species' jailbait reason
firing up the flashlight in the dark
for a circumspect peek in the woods sleeping.
Tell me your adventures in living.

Another hour spent
strangling a reindeer
on the taiga, boreally-speaking.

TERMINAL LIVING

"Everybody in the world is frightened of getting cut."
Charles Manson

I
The image complete
--collapsing corpses, rag dolls
with skulls shot away ...
ruby-red blood spurting
slipstick/eyeshadow/mascara
all so reptilian replete.

II
The long fingers of the pianist
playing rifle fire to a
captive audience,
stiletto tones;
the trance effect,
precedes a cobra's strike,
summer without smoke.

III
A glass of absinthe
--the Degas painting,
Marc Lepine measuring out his vial,
measuring the worth of a single
woman and finding