Mephistopheles sticks out his throaty

tongue--to sample the lineaments of

an artist's brushstrokes.

his overactive salivatory glands leak

down from the finishing touch--an

artist prematurely committed.

standing in the way of what the artist

knew would become a whole other

painting--with the possibility of a

non premature finish.

the conjuration progresses--art provenance.

hanging in a place of honor, someone's

home--a matter of acquisitional record.

the very spot of their chosen wall, feng shui.

with no visiting hours imposed, the obsessive

collector is slobbered on by the barter of that

brushstroke.

so the painting is lent to a museum--where its

viewers find themselves in front of other paintings.

though viewing the same one.

by sheer force of attraction, they all end up

in front of that painting again.

as if the museum emptied out in a single

viewpoint.

brushstroke.

the sandy smoke of the

moon, explodes with waves

that rose above dark water.

spreading the ruffled shells

of Japanese fans.

fluttering the nucleic pearls

of her crystal *****.

I read me, she shows.

black locust firewood, gathered by a

hillock of men--with axes & spades for

arms.

inversely dug out, to dig in--deeper.

the ointments of sleep applied to their

eyes--left open, right closed--right open,

left closed.

left/right open.

though they see nothing of this.

when the pit is gutted--the men divide,

into semicircles.

heaping *****-fulls of earth over their

shoulders.

to ceremonialize the short of the long, the

long of the short.

they then ignite the bonfire of black locust

firewood.

about face, & wander off far enough to

disavail appearance.

which's when naked women appear--who

see nothing of this.

drunkenly slip into the bonfire, the curing

of semicircles.

the long of the long...winter, sees all of this.

solstice.

dry hexagons sometimes pop

their honeyed cysts.

discarding paper mache masks,

cursedly cratered on forest trails.

to redraft the barbed crosshatching

of stingers.

huddled to the ****** warmth of

their queen, who winters responsively

to the name: Morta.

a top hat in an empty freezer.

thumb size magnets of vintage Xmas

lights, shifting around like a ouija board.

one dimensional warp sleights of color,

motioning.

placing blind eyes to motion without

color, lit irrespectively by contrast--

or current.

battering ram frost, whose heavy

breathing leaves the freezer door open.

an: i, Chinese water tortures the: u,

of the word: thrum.

--till it becomes: thrim.

sound over writing...

rice paper bulges of wind-water.

as a cold case parrot named: Rainy,

taped to a lamppost by its stricken

vocabulary teacher.

jumbles the wind-water gradient of numbers

& characters it inhabits.

sumi ink bars, with an escapees tropic strokes.

kyphosis/hunchback--basket of abandon, made

stronger than a dozen shadows of men.

mustachio bushel eyebrow covering his left eye,

a bloaty flap of toad-warts covering his

right eye.

palsied arms clamped at his sides--like a chick's

wings embossed in yolk, draggy right foot trailing him.

Quasimodo: 'half made'--to swing from thickly fibrous

ropes & land on musty planks.

swinging/sliding/climbing, up & down, man to creature--

creature to man...in the attic of housed worship.

made deaf by the struck-unstruck sounds of Notre Dame's

bells, cathedral that gave him ears to hear.

of which he named each, each a heroine of the belltower.

made King of Fools by the townspeople during festivity--

crowned & propped up on a third-hand thrown.

stealing away a crowd throwing currency in a gypsy

goddess' tambourine: Esmerelda, whose proceeds went

to the: King of Thieves.

not long after Quasimodo/Hunchback is accosted with

rotted vegetables by the townspeople as he's led to the

public square.

after blindly following orders to abduct a certain gypsy

by the archdeacon.

where he's bound to a rotating pillory & flogged thirty times.

Esmeralda mounts the pillory and pours water from a leathery

flask into his mouth, as he called for it crooked-faced, the jutting

topples of sparse--but hard in the yellow of teeth.

amid bloodlust catcalls that already drenched the pasture-green

rags of his shirt.

his surrogate Father, archdeacon: Claude Frollo, the one that

first reached into a basket to coddle abandonment--as to invest

in afterworld treasures...rebreaks the bones of fifteenth century

sacrilege into covetous place.

whose unanesthetized voices escape from the mouths of Quasimodo

& Esmeralda.

whom the Hunchback rescued from the gallows, citing sanctuary

by church decree, after being falsely accused of murdering

Captain Phoebus.

a philandering standby of integrity, that saw Esmeralda's

eyes follow & fall for the span of his sword, all the wooded

babes of her marital hopes--dashed.

followed up by the sped blackening of the archdeacon's

hooded robe, ripping open the door of jealousy he spied thru.

an almost unbroken motion of forced entry, & ****** of blade

into Captain Phoebus' back--though the ***** survived the *****.

this active underbelly could withhold no more the fat of

a pig on a spit, so after several **** attempts on Esmeralda--

the "bewitched" archdeacon: Claude Frollo, was impaled by

a nail like a renounced garment by Quasimodo, and left to moths.

he loved Esmeralda as he hid his face from her in their brief

interchanges, with the rests of a pianist absorbing unplayable keys.

along with the gargoyle that spat fire from the belltower to ensure

her escape into the arms of her true love: Piere, a poet.

along the underground torches of safe passage, Esmeralda &

Piere, followed Quasimodo's secret instruction...as they were seen

to sunset.

as the king's army closed in on: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he

clung to his stony confidant--a gargoyle.

where the pale stories of dawn climbed the cathedral, Quasimodo

clung to the gargoyle's head, where he was talked way down.