Sharpe - Animal husbandry today

FOR
AND BECAUSE OF
Deborah

MASSACRE AT SUPERSTITION BLUFF

Stagecoach with a penchant to drink,
the tinhorn crucifix,
cracked wheels fixated
on a chasm below,

chaste revolvers filled
with explosive chorus girls,
gentle reins
and the masochistic horse:

all the same under gravity.

Locals arrows pointing you
in new directions,

to find a fable, a life,
elsewhere.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR NILS LUZAK, CLASSICAL PIANIST

What makes us hate
piano tuners?
Their jealous eyes?

You ever allegro your father?

Why does E -flat major
do terrible things, like
excite optometrists?

Does ivory make the softest bed?
Ebony the hardest casket?

Should eyes be gouged
for greater musical acuity?

In Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini ,
when skies open and vengeance
bolts heavenly, are you Rachmaninoffing
hell from those helpless pedals?

Given baroque means

deformed pearl, should one

graft one thousand shattered
oysters shells to every pianos hull?

Mother-of-pearl is visual trickery,
destined for the secular and profane?

Harmonics are paternal lies,
doomed to become sacred?

Why must each chord contain
a condemned father?

Why must I see the music so clearly?

EQUILATERAL POEMS

Receding Matchbook

For danger eclipsed

every excuse for him to
pursue laundry instead
of silk whiter-whites in
the Biltmore Hotel, where
Dianes blouse was but
temporary advertising.

Alimony

Mixed metaphor Sedentary

The girls flitting past

were sparrows. What she
saw as those delicate
bodies ran was not the
youthful abandon of
playgrounds, but a life
shed never rise to.

Rash

Productive Means

The whir of fabric,

at such speed, cancelled
thought. For others this
sound haunted sleep, while
Aura spent a weeks wages
on an industrial fan,
placing it next to her cot,
replicating works perfect
emptiness in dreams.

White Noise

FRARBETE

After the container,
how to recognize
the content
easily cast,
always held
if not inscribed upon?

A regret for what
amounts to faulty math
1000 x over.

The want for concrete
markers to parse us into
ever smaller marks.

When to realize
is to lay to rest.

What are we preparing for?

THE POINTLESS ODYSSEY

Frank gave you :
That someone, somewhere, was
Putting on his shoes. Pompous
Certainty makes bookies preachers;
You have to break them or go broke.

Outside, you Benjamin a man with a baseball bat
To watch your car. He turns, smashing a Lexus,
Shattering the cars headlights.

A lady yells from across the street,

I paid you twenty.

The price has gone up.

In the childrens hospital you place
A hand on their pale foreheads;
This is not making them stronger.

Eyes gaze through pain and uncertainty.
You carefully document everything:

No Shoes.

Outside: rub your skin off
With whisky. Youre gigantic
And the stakes are high.

Sobriety leaves others mute: tinkering
Temporarily with day jobs; sewing
Buttons onto pound cakes
Like reputable grandmothers.

But the gamble holds you steady.
You hit the bowling alley
With a notepad.

They all slide in socks on the hardwood.

You want to laugh at every stale, hackneyed
Banker and yet, in the presence of the real
Thing, even the spirit leaves you: ascending,
Unshaken, like every split.

13 STATEMENTS AND THEIR COROLLARIES

My handicap should be more on the back nine.
Theres an equation for the speed at which all things fall.
Music today is just noise.
A crocodiles tongue is attached to the roof of its mouth.
I had no idea that cactus was illegal.
Distance is an optical illusion.
Rednecks have their own eloquence.
I compulsively cut my hair.
Find me a stockbroker, Ill show you a thief.
The trade winds shaped migration throughout history.
My wifes a decent lay.
Tuesday is Seniors Day.
Where can I get a rubber plant?

You tire too quickly.
Gravity never tires, even of itself.
Said Bartk in 1805 .
Either they speak, or you listen, upside down.
Lay off the peyote.
Id trade my eyes for you here.
Conservative poetry is justified to the right.
SSRI s or barbers college, in my opinion.
Why I invest on the hard eight.
Im in the doldrums.
Charity begins at home.
She broke, producing her licence, to save cents.
You will still be alone.

THOUGHTS: GEORGES BRAQUE

{ Wheeled Chair }

Today a young child and father navigated the town square, father on bicycle, son a wheeled chair. How strange the
child seemed spoked rims replacing legs, hands propelling him forward on geometry. Quite possibly he was born without use of the lower extremities: if so, while watching the man ride his bicycle, which did he consider his father?

{ Georges Couthon }

Something of my early schooling (far before the cole des Beaux-Arts) has imposed itself upon me after lying dormant. Georges Couthon, my brother in country and name, also lacked functioning legs. History additionally tells us he lost use of his head when the Revolution turned. Can you imagine them dragging the poor cripple to death, while Robespierre walked assuredly beside? The guillotine was likely not the liberty either had in mind.

{ Silence by Anticipation }

Could I anticipate every critics question, answering it in pigment, prior to the asking?

{ Georges Couthon II }

Again! It was written that Monsieur Couthon would, on occasion, ride the back of a man when his chair was indisposed. If one, the ridden, is transformed to that
of a wheeled chair, is the other, the rider, also changed? Perhaps he has become something more noble: a throne?

{ Portrait: I Am a Ring }

Today a photographer came to memorialize me my paintings, although me, depict something else, and
as such fail. While I sat, the background forced itself
forward or dropped out completely. For a while I was
a wall. Then a hat. A scarf. A ring. How confused and disappointed the camera will be tonight in its darkroom!

{ Muscadelle or Chardonnay? }

My mind is a hot wind maker and maker of balloons.
Funny what rises to consciousness: today it was grapes
and a clarinet simultaneously. I believe the grapes
were Muscadelle,* but you cant always taste the mind.

* It is not clear here whether Braque is being forgetful or purposefully daft;
any viticulturist can tell you the variety depicted in grapes and clarinet is,
most obviously, Clairette. Clairette grapes are known for their high alcohol yield
(now considered a fault, but in his day an attribute), which may be source to
the confusion. Notice the sub-homophonic similarities. Editors note

TWO TRAINS

There are seventeen apples in a tree.
If you carve your name into the trees trunk,
How many apples do you have?

A plane crashes on the border of two countries.
Can you wear white to the funeral
If youre a virgin before mayday ?

Johns mother is seven years younger
Than Johns father, who is twice as old as John
Plus sixteen years. If John is seven, how much