Peter Magliocco

THINKING ABOUT ART & LIFE

(AFTER MY 50TH BIRTHDAY HANGOVER)


Now what of our gray hair

& 60s' idealistic principles

gone to drydock hell?


So hard to pretend not being bourgeois

despite underground pretensions.

What is "underground" these days,

if not boho-banking in plastic

instead of Armani suits, or waiting

for trendy tattoos

with your name above the nipple ring.


Begin by breaking new cyberground

in a virtual redefining of ourselves

& what we really believe in --

by writing real poetry from the seat

of a Buick-6

& not your mother's closet,

with laptops painting

prophylactics of Zen

downloading cave ceilings

with magic markers,

let's see God recreate Adam

in our imago


for that digital fresco masterpiece

beyond the censoring

shame of cultural-castrations.



unsent postcard from the left bank (#23)


that's me,

jaded American in Paris

your shady "doctor"

lost by the train station

stumbling on white walkways

cobbled by history's dust

snaking its untied ribbon

over a meandering grayness

local terrorists dream of igniting

a reign of disarray

halting that blurring traffic maelstrom

your Canon eyes photogenically flash

like rouged genitals under gauzy silk

recalling, how in duress, we discovered

the feast of some pope's wayward son

there reverently washing our bodies

in that old hotel room's drab pallor

"not a fetish-thing at all" you said

mystified by fey ablution

while during your abortion

planting soft arches on pillowed ground

your camcorder captured a Man Ray still-life

tinted by invisible brooding tongues

Allah's guillotines sever daily outside

through the amber pane's splintering

a fossil footprint love left us

the blown-up "baby" bomb's picture

in living color --

an ectoplasmic shadow's

faux christening



hip-hop hamlet's born again daydream

(non-parable #'0)


prozac eyes stumble thru ozones

as old H-bomb tests cling

to the Bush family spirit-remains

beyond what pale deaf mutes sing


for animals speaking in tongues

to avant-garde artists

like black-hatted German Joseph Beuys

lining culture tombs with felt-fattiness


(eaten by ghosts of holocaust victims

future generations are haunted by

tangents of non-linear completion

in white-face J.B. taught our pet hare

how human hypocrisy abrades truth

for the rotting dictionary of e-scribes

meanings vanish as immaterial parables

parrots peck from mankind's legacy)


as the galactic starlight freezes

deserted drive-in movie screens

the last earthly survivor melts

words for lost masterpieces



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