And now we see the singularity
of the artist, wrists spread bare on
mimed canvas, finally we see
his consistency.
Lazarus is dead on the first day.
Gold background, rocky outcrop,
sense of cluttered space.
Do you see the decay?
Can you sympathize, or do you notice?

I cannot sympathize with Duccio,
I am too vain to admit his Maestá
survives while my brain rots from
alcohol. But I remember Duccio is
at least fifty years old when his Maestá
preeminently destroys my career
as a visual artist. I do not mind.

Lazarus is dead on the second day.
Duccio had many pupils, among them
Simone Martini, whose Annunciation
is a cropped rehash of Byzantine/Gothic
flopped with Duccio's handy flair,
a pious reverence and virtue.
It sweeps and moves. Or attempts.
Lazarus is no longer sleeping.

I have never been to the city of Florence,
not now nor the 1300s, so I need not
explain my lack of comprehension.
Lazarus has risen now,
but it is different than I remember.
Lazarus is all alone, and
Lazarus is alive,
doomed to walk in mortal Hellfire
a second time over.

i think i'm forgetting
how to talk i'm losing
my words in all of the
tears and blood and its
getting a little harder to
stand up without falling
over i don't know if i can
be saved at this point but
it would be nice if someone
tried to pull me above water

I used to have a lot of sweet metaphors to add in your girlfriends cake so she can bite the sweetness that will soon make her teeth rot and have them removed by the same dentist who made your sister pregnant with the same **** that had DNA of an 8year old child that was ***** and killed 2years ago found dead in the dustbins of Khayelitsha.

When you look at yourself,
Your psychedelic bruises,
Your prosperous veins,
Your ever-increasing freckles,
The stretch marks on your hips,
Your ever-so-slight collarbones,
Your deep blue eyes,
And you say
"Why can't I be lovely?"

Understand that when I look at you,
I see the endless galaxies,
The roads yet to be travelled,
The marvellous constellations,
I see the lines of Jupiter,
The glorious mountains,
I see the wondrous ocean.
So when I say
"Darling you already are"
Know that when I look at you,
I see my world.

Where can I find people like me?
Do they actually exist somewhere
out there int the vast expanse of the world?

Or do I sit here bemoaning my self made exile
in the same vein that a child does when placed
in the corner as punishment for some transgression?

Even if there were some community I might
feel welcome in hiding with at some far
flung place pledging true freedom, still I would
suffer the pains of having a broken soul.

It's been a long time since I opened up
my shoebox full of pictures and saw myself
five years old and wading barefoot through
a cold creek....loving every second of it.

There's another polaroid of me feeding a mint
to that angry old donkey, dead years now,
but that ornery ol ******* and I had some
sort've understanding, him knowing his place
and me trying to discover mine.

Most of my life has been spent clawing my
way toward some ill defined future I thought
I had to travel toward in order to live well,
and now I find myself willingly going backward.

My Dad achieved his dream of having land when
I was fifteen, and when I came back to live with him
again, his land became my own, his cares for our place,
became my own, hauling rocks and worrying after fences,
being a part of something that we built from our hands.

The world changed quickly though,
and if I had been older and wiser I
would have expected that the eventual
break would appear when most we all
needed something of peace.

But those minutes in the clear creek,
and that grudging comraderie with a donkey,
getting off the bus when seventeen and having
horses recognize me as I walk down the dirt road,
hoofed friends meeting me at a gate every day;
that is the home I need...and one day will return to.