A monstrous flash of pink lightning 
rip-zipped across the sky
	
(after the painting by Nathan Carter)


Across the sky across my eyes
and now rip-zipping across the sky
and how it zips it rips it whips
in monstrous pink
in the wink of an eye
across a Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah sky
and now, even now, and how
it winks hot pink at you and I
the monster of my evening sky
without a reason why
it blinks pink light across my eyes.


Very Rare Picture of Earth

(after the painting by Francis Picabia)


From out here
the first time it has been seen
in a millennium or more
like a photograph 
from an album of old friends
it seems more like a blue machine
than a planet inhabited   
by people we knew
more like the cylinders and drums
flywheels and dynamos
that it has become
we are estranged
like flesh and blood
from pistons and wheels
it goes its way
we go ours
to a home where we belong
among others of our kind.


Self-Portrait Between Clock and Bed

(after the painting by Edvard Munch)


It was as it was supposed to be
this syzygy
of a grandfather clock, myself
and the bed in which I was born
a prophetic alignment of my stars
I am caught between
the ticks of a clock
and the bed in which 
I will surely die
myself by myself alone 
in a room where I exist
in the clutter of my past
a piece of furniture
no more alive than they.


The morning after the Blue Northern 
there was a calm that settled over
the Seven Summits

(after the painting by Nathan Carter)


On the seven summits of the mind
each a mind unto itself
each with a soul of a different color
each speaking a language of its own
from the seven corners of the earth
blue mockingbirds gather and swirl
in tornadic rings with a single thought
in the language of blue awakening-
but in the morning a calm
with nothing changed
on the seven summits of the mind
as if the birds had never come.


Anthropometry of the Blue Period

(after the painting by Yves Klein)


After blue
in the spectrum green

blue comes and goes
like an old man's memory
becoming green

becomes a man
the measure of a man
in the graveyard of his thoughts

it says:  I am
allegorically speaking
blue

it says:

some things green 
are sometimes blue.


Rupture Frénétique

(after the painting by Georges Mathieu)


Between daylight and daybreak
and the night before it breaks
into a billion particles of light
between the rupture of the sky
and the glow in your eyes
and the thought within
and between two worlds
between opposite ends
of the universe
the mirror between them
splinters into a billion minds
between the mourning
and the resurrection
in the afterglow.


Night Subway

(after the painting by Jimmy Ernst)


Darkness an open mouth
offers me its solitude
I am Jonah 
in the belly of a whale
at 3:00 am
the stations of my life
pass by, time-blurred,    
sightless on a train
going somewhere
if anywhere at all
I am swallowed
by my past
the present in its gut
it feeds on memories
eats the light
as if it were and I its food
I am alone in my way
to the end
of the promised line.