Wednesday, November 21, 2018

"The sun's not yellow, it's chicken"

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2018-11-21T10_44_22-08_00

this ain't the reincarnation of Bob Dylan's whorehouse
Vincent wasn’t a cowardly lion or lazy dock worker
he was a seizure holding himself up against the 19th century sunlight

the sun’s not yellow, it’s lactose intolerant
and so are the prostitutes when you hand them part of your ear
familiarly known as Sien she didn’t care what was coming to her

she already knew how black it got, she had crows in her teeth
wheat cut down by Vincent’s scythe paint brush as he stared into the sun
blind, colors come thicker, which ones are our gods?

even a caged painter can change the world when everything’s burning around him, there goes the starlight again flickering rings
dreams of Saturn pummeled his memory like a pugilist from another century
we resist in vain when pushing against the Second Industrial Revolution

but it’s clear that Millet is waiting and he never lived on potatoes
gleaning is not for the birds as the peasants do their damnedest to stay alive
including praying, but those are deaf ears; did I mention I was bleeding?

it’s alright ma, I’m only tracing the back breaking words of others more dedicated to lifting themselves out of squalor
this thing got teeth, but the weeds got me and I want to stare at a wall and hope I remember all the cuts in pink elephants on parade
stucco saints remind me of a lackadaisical time when suicide wasn’t a calling and the clock on the wall didn’t mock me like Churchill at a Golden Corral

we occasionally stumble on truth out there in the colors, at least we might
at least we might occasionally stumble on truth when we dance with the yellow sunflower ghosts in the midday of another inspired breakthrough
ghosts burning in the white light of an interrupted brain, punctuation

marks prodding us on to live a life dipped in the mirrors of God, it’s heartbeat throbbing inside the ear the same way a bullet
ricochets for all to see as an unhealthy painter eats lead and hallucinates a cypress Christ
death for the night now brother
death death death

Jason Baldinger/Charles Cicirella

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