Claude Monet
You pursue your wife as you hound
The grain stacks and pond lilies
Like an autistic, a stutterer.
You track her through the maze
Of her mirrors until she becomes
A garden party of herself,
All long skirts and parasols,
Until she has lost her own face.
You see it at the end: a screaming
Smudge of charcoal, hardly decorative.
The Barwon River races
These strange Monday people
Picnic by the riverside in a ring
Old as Stonehenge. Now and then
They bellow into the gums,
Tall and naked as their mothers.
The current drags at the willows
Somewhere, where the soil is dark.
Over there they push their buggies
Closer to the green. Then
Shift off to the room
Of another narcissist (sometimes
Called a doctor.) Weeping,
Weeping that makes the hand
On the gear stick stronger.
Circus
There’s traffic in the night sky.
Caramel drips and lingers high.
Mouths teem with hungry eyes.
The sand releases its bees.
Onto cracked hide, velvet pride.
Absurd stools and rings of fire.
Death turns somersaults.
Swallows children, rabbits, marble balls.
Slaughtered mouth feather-full.
Piece de resistance.
My brain shatters like a red balloon.
Silence—with the lights still on.