Out of a **** he made Great Art
It was no ordinary **** no!
It was straight from the heart, that
   ****
It had lain too long in the dark
Now was it's time to start
To make its bid for freedom... and for stardom.

It flew like a dart that **** from the
   heart
Like an arrow strung from Cupids
   bow
Little did it know how luminous it'd
   glow
Becoming one of the Greats in the
   Farting Canon.

It was probably the greatest **** poem
   ever written
In my own humble opinion
It was very daring and it smelt of
   onion
It was certainly the fairest fartiest
   poem I ever seen
If it was one of the three Musketeers
It would have to have been
   D'artagoine.

It inflated like a balloon, blew up like
   a great glass bubble
Then it popped and headed off
   toward England
Flying further afield than any ****
   had ever flown
It touched people's hearts, bewitched
   every nation
Resounded around the world
Yea! was heard in every Kingdom.

It flew long, it rounded the Horn
Like a Lark, that ****, it soared and
   sung
It was no boring old ****
It was far fartier and fruiter than that
It was a King of Farts
Way above the fartiest of farters and
   all the farting Arthurs
It was the real King Arthur
The King Arthur of all farts and
   Farters.

A real Belter was that **** that came
   from the heart
That had all the Angels singing in
   their cloisters,
A real work of Art just like Mozart
Or remember... remember your
   Shakespeare
"Hark! A ****, a ****! Whereforth art ?
    Thou ****"
It played its part, that ****, yea! it
   wielded its Excalibur.

O! there's nothing I'd rather do than lie here blowing sweet bubbles next
   to you
You! on your little flutey flute flute and
   Me! on my big Bass Trombone.

You might as well ask me
Not to take another breath -
To climb to the top of Arthurs seat
And not stand with my arms outstretched –
To stand in the middle of an icy street –
In the depths of midwinter
And not gaze with wonder
At the cloud of unspoken poetry
Pouring from my lips
Utterly failing to warm my hands –
And ask me –
Why do I continue –
Look in awe upon something –
So natural, that gives me
So little pleasure in return
And yet enriches my life -
So indescribably?

I (fabrication)

Arthur Quincy folds his arms together
Sensing that interfering desire again!

Cant shake this fugue
Or forget the bad stuff he used to take/
Its a lingering presence/

The residual ash in his eyes blinking coffins & dazzling premonitions to the other smalltown poets writing in
Their kitchens to the sound of
Wheatgrass dancing outside in June and
A vacuum's warm considerate hum
From upstairs.

Post office on strike and
Cars being made with straw MAN he thinks
What happened here???
The day crossed out with faulty watches
And parkbench *** fantasies
& the crude laughing regular here
Sipping his tea
Wondering if he'll ever be as much a hit with the ladies as he was in the 1970s

Former beggarman Quincy lays himself out in an empty parking lot feeling invulnerable to the snow

As it collects over his shirt he whistles a happy tune from a date he went on before

The great sourness shelled him out of
Social fulfillment.

Now he keeps to himself
Making stories out of his bedroom and
Crying
crying for
His first love &
The laundry place shut down now wheres he gonna go/

Old Quincy used to smoke expensive tobacco but has since decided to save it for whenever he remarries. Or a brilliant morning where the neighbor sleeps in so he can sleep in too.

The view from his window is a continous rotation of wet crows who peer in and for a brief moment see the man's hands to his head making sure his hair hasn't fallen off yet..
House walls heavy with age
expose themselves occasionally
With an after image of past inhabitors,
The essence of their dry lips
Or olive cotton sweaters hanging from a rocking chair,
The enthusiasm of a corner lamp
Unappreciated by all
Past and present.

II (veteran romantic)

Arthur Quincy shelters his mind from strange ideas
Or conspiracy he hasn't "lost it" yet at least!

He has a hobby of painting the active society and
Expresses mood as colorful clouds
Floating out the skull of us to
Blend in an energy pollinating the
Deli and antique shop and yoga studio
V A P O R
to be swallowed by accident and catch the empathic disease of the
Depressed and jubilant simultaneous,
Makes easy living confusing and
Impossible to achieve in an absolute way!
He carries this belief
When interacting with others
Arthur Quincy understands
That balance is key to fulfillment
(so far as his life is concerned)

However, hardly anyone has seem him laugh and so assumes he doesn't have the ability to.
In reality he saves his joy and holds it to lift his lungs from despairing all day long to be released
Late afternoon in the comfort of home
As a display of feral bellows and supernatural ecstasy. This seems somewhat overromantic and exaggerated but someone has claimed to have had the rare pleasure of witnessing it!

Arthur calls the same address once a week, an anonymous voice speaks from the line opposite and while mysterious
It is clear he adores this voice. He adores the unacted subtlety and passion in this voice.
He smiles when he hears this voice which is simply enough.

Nearby those naive poets use Arthur as a muse sometimes too directly
Often referencing rumors of his hermetic life
Or retreating into his headspace
Unrealistically blowing his experiences into fable
And turning even his stirless sleep into a fabulous fruitbasket of language.

On the surface he appears forlorn and
Bitter with the winter gradually molding to his skin. Like anyone can tell you he has felt this before! Haven't you? But through all the stories and impossibilities of Arthur he is reserved in his
Knowing of important things. He is reserved in revealing that he not only knows how music sounds but where music comes from. He never reads the newspaper out of habit to feel in-the-know. He never lies about his feelings or his intentions.
Arthur exists in the
Glow of himself
And persists on breathing the glow of the street,
He is a wordless poet and veteran romantic.

III (funeral)

One day Arthur passed away a few weeks from Thanksgiving.
His name put on the paper he never read
And examined by a young girl
Who was only hearing of him now.

"Arthur C. Quincy/ 73/ passed away this Saturday. To be remembered as a quiet and misunderstood man envigored with the lightness only percieved by a rare and special few"

This description came as a surprise to those who knew Quincy as the claustrophic and uninteresting grump
Who's sidewalk idlings were unexplained and strangely hostile.

He saw the sky and its shifting canvas,
He saw the distant cats leaned on balconies impressed with the daytime ambiguity in firestations and libraries.
He would conjur a grin
From the passive conversation between a mother and her son.
He once saw two strangers fall for each other on the bus! A conjoined sun had bloomed between them.

Just a few attended the funeral. Upon inspection of his house following Arthur's death, someone found a will left for Helen Ashbury. A 55 year old woman who lived a three day drive away in Michigan..An identity to his weekly telephone fantasy!
It assumed all of his belongings to her, among them a military grade flashlight with his carved initials, a photograph of his time as a lumberer signed to "Peter! All the best in Costa Rica" and a copy of W.C Williams collected poems. Where folded on page 206 as part of the poem "Orchestra" was highlighted

"I love you. My heart is
innocent.
         And this is the first day of the world!"

Eventually Helen Ashbury received the news of Arthurs passing, as well as these things.
At the sight of the poem she wept,
the man she only knew through a voice after years of correspondence.
Upon being questioned she refused to explain their meeting in the first place. That was a special time, a time which the public would misinterpret or slander with rumor.
While Arthur wasn't widely loved in the town during his life, he was a popular topic from death on. As more information came out! Serving in world war II and his companionship with a parisian ***,
Who shared the wonder of the rooftop and spoke on the value of tea as a food replacement.
He once met a girl there at a dance and in a show electrified with lust they moved to Lucienne Boyer without the knowledge of who would win the war.
He had a son with her, Who resided in France most of his life as Quincy regrettably
Abandoned their situation to
Pursue other things, in his journal he admits his wish to have connected with him more, referring to his leaving as the worst mistake in his life.
All of this masked behind his firm neutrality. His walk lacking suggestion and his wrist without the delicacy of a painter (not that people knew he painted and so didn't pay attention to anything like that)

He was buried by noon. Some say his son was at the funeral. People gave their partings, and Helen wanted so badly to say goodbye to him. Instead left with his curios and his infinite voice.

IV (i'll be around)

The following year at a yard sale Helen came across a series of musty and used records. In the stack of them was a Cab Calloway compilation. Nestled in his desperate wailings and hi-de-** was the track "I'll Be Around" a slow and patient song that Arthur sang to her once. She recalled that night with ease, and felt her shoulders sink at the thought.
The album was $4, on the drive home she watched the trees shake with the wind, their leaves transluscently pale at the angle she was going. She could feel a weight there in her chest. The weight of him, of his heart supposing itself onto hers magnetically. She rolled down the windows and let the wind surround her, blowing her blonde hair back and forcing her to squint a little.

"I love you. My heart is innocent"

she recalled the poem he left for her. Of course not written by him but it felt as deeply personal as if he had.

"-and this is the first day of the world!"

Helen lifted a cigarette out from her purse. The drag extinguishing immediately as it's trail left the car. A bewilderment slowly consumed her.

Sur cette place je m'ennuie,
Obélisque dépareillé ;
Neige, givre, bruine et pluie
Glacent mon flanc déjà rouillé ;

Et ma vieille aiguille, rougie
Aux fournaises d'un ciel de feu,
Prend des pâleurs de nostalgie
Dans cet air qui n'est jamais bleu.

Devant les colosses moroses
Et les pylônes de Luxor,
Près de mon frère aux teintes roses
Que ne suis-je debout encor,

Plongeant dans l'azur immuable
Mon pyramidion vermeil
Et de mon ombre, sur le sable,
Écrivant les pas du soleil !

Rhamsès, un jour mon bloc superbe,
Où l'éternité s'ébréchait,
Roula fauché comme un brin d'herbe,
Et Paris s'en fit un hochet.

La sentinelle granitique,
Gardienne des énormités,
Se dresse entre un faux temple antique
Et la chambre des députés.

Sur l'échafaud de Louis seize,
Monolithe au sens aboli,
On a mis mon secret, qui pèse
Le poids de cinq mille ans d'oubli.

Les moineaux francs souillent ma tête,
Où s'abattaient dans leur essor
L'ibis rose et le gypaëte
Au blanc plumage, aux serres d'or.

La Seine, noir égout des rues,
Fleuve immonde fait de ruisseaux,
Salit mon pied, que dans ses crues
Baisait le Nil, père des eaux,

Le Nil, géant à barbe blanche
Coiffé de lotus et de joncs,
Versant de son urne qui penche
Des crocodiles pour goujons !

Les chars d'or étoilés de nacre
Des grands pharaons d'autrefois
Rasaient mon bloc heurté du fiacre
Emportant le dernier des rois.

Jadis, devant ma pierre antique,
Le pschent au front, les prêtres saints
Promenaient la bari mystique
Aux emblèmes dorés et peints ;

Mais aujourd'hui, pilier profane
Entre deux fontaines campé,
Je vois passer la courtisane
Se renversant dans son coupé.

Je vois, de janvier à décembre,
La procession des bourgeois,
Les Solons qui vont à la chambre,
Et les Arthurs qui vont au bois.

Oh ! dans cent ans quels laids squelettes
Fera ce peuple impie et fou,
Qui se couche sans bandelettes
Dans des cercueils que ferme un clou,

Et n'a pas même d'hypogées
A l'abri des corruptions,
Dortoirs où, par siècles rangées,
Plongent les générations !

Sol sacré des hiéroglyphes
Et des secrets sacerdotaux,
Où les sphinx s'aiguisent les griffes
Sur les angles des piédestaux ;

Où sous le pied sonne la crypte,
Où l'épervier couve son nid,
Je te pleure, ô ma vieille Égypte,
Avec des larmes de granit !

I've got it very bad
Help me to be strong

Anxiety, then sad
Music for the throng

India and Thailand
Shiva the Destroyer

Arthurs Edens, lads
Prayers for my employer

                Work.

Arthur knew his mother had died before anyone told him. Not because he was particularly close to her—in fact the opposite was true—but because there was no other reason for his sister to be calling him at eight o’clock on a Friday morning. Arthur looked at his phone vibrating in his hand. He was standing on the corner of Queen Street and early morning commuters rushed around him this way and that on their way to whatever very important business they had to do that Friday morning. Nobody noticed the man standing on the corner with his old-fashioned homburg hat, briefcase in one hand and phone in the other who was at that moment imagining yelling at the crowd, ‘Here, you answer it. Perhaps you’ll slow down a minute and remember your own mother and how many days it’s been since you spoke to her last’.

It had been eight hundred and forty days since Arthur had spoken to his mother. Anna, his sister, would text him every now and again to give him updates such as, ‘Mum’s been diagnosed with cancer,’ and ‘Doc says she won’t make it til Xmas’ and Arthurs personal favourite, ‘Don’t you think it’s time to make amends?’.

Arthur’s phone was still vibrating. The street crossing bleated and the throng surged around him. He looked up at the flashing green man and back at the screen in his hand. He would have preferred a text. Anna would judge how he reacted to this phone call. No matter what he said, he would be unequivocally wrong. Would she be crying when he answered? Probably. Would she expect him to cry? The crossing signal subsided. The green man disappeared, and a red one appeared instead. Arthur shuffled away from the road and answered the call.

He was right of course. He’d been around the block enough times to predict people’s behaviour though he was still a little unclear on how they expected him to react. Mirroring Anna’s wails of anguish seemed inappropriate. Instead, he attempted what he hoped would be a comforting approach by pointing out that their mother was no longer suffering. He’d intentionally kept his voice even, yet he could taste the bitterness in Anna’s voice as she retorted that it wasn’t the point. He hadn’t even been there while she was suffering, she said, and she supposed he wouldn’t be interested in attending the wake on Saturday either. In fact, Arthur had no problem with attending the wake. Now his mother was dead, she could hardly do any more damage.

Eight hundred and forty days ago, Arthur had had no intention that it would be the last time he’d see his mother. He’d gone over to see her like he did every six months or so, sitting in his childhood home at the table where he grew up, drinking tea out of the floral-patterned mug he’d gifted her for Mother’s Day back in 1982. It was all very familiar. And as usual, Arthur felt a smouldering in his stomach as he listened to his mother complain about her life and telling him how he should be living his. You’re selfish, she’d tell him. No wife, no kids; all alone, just living for yourself. Arthur didn’t live all alone. He had an aquarium of fan-tailed guppies, but he didn’t bother telling her that.

This day as he sat at the table only half listening to his mother, he noticed a pigeon had made a nest in the tree outside the dining room window. He watched as the pigeon fluttered down to the nest and two tiny gaping beaks popped up, squeaking for food.

‘Pigeons,’ he told his mother, motioning toward the window with the floral mug.

She and glanced toward the window and narrowed her eyes. ‘Vermin,’ she said. ‘I hope a storm blows them out of the tree. We don’t need pigeons around here.’

The steady smoulder moved from Arthur’s stomach to his chest. He drained his tea, stood up, walked the kitchen, rinsed the mug, and put it in the sink.

His mother shuffled after him from the dining room. ‘Where are you going all of a sudden?’ she asked.

‘I’ve gotta go,” he said. I’ll see you later.’

And he meant it. He thought he would see her later. But in the months that followed, for better or for worse, a peaceful kind of apathy set in before the smouldering subsided. He didn’t hate her. He just didn’t want to see her. Or hear her. Or interact with her in any way. Even when he heard about the cancer. The silence was too beautiful, like a spell that shouldn’t be broken.  

At the wake, Arthur sat down again at the dining room table. People wandered around the house like ghosts that didn’t belong. A few elderly ladies patted him on the shoulder and told him they were sorry for his loss. Anna glared at him and said nothing at all. She was preoccupied playing the mourning daughter. Dressed all in black, she went from person to person showing them how distraught she was by dabbing a handkerchief at her smudged eyes. Her husband and their two teenaged daughters solemnly distributed cups of coffee and sandwiches cut into triangles.

To Arthur, the whole masquerade felt like the final scene of a B-grade movie; predictable, boring, laughable. When the credits began to roll—the boring parts like cleaning up afterwards—all these spectators would get up and leave. This wasn’t their problem. It never was.

Arthur glanced over at the window. The pigeon and nest were gone (that didn’t surprise him). But the tree was gone too. There was nothing. Arthur stared slack jawed at the empty space until he found himself wondering if he’d imagined the whole thing.