The
Pavement Artist
1.
Andiamo! Ho le ali. Andiamo!
Let's
go! I have wings. Let’s go!
The chalk is ingrained in
the grooves of my skin,
a rainbow of pastel dust
muddied to iron ore,
the core of me sludge
now.
I have drunk drudgery,
through sluggish osmosis
become
a cartoon fool in the lap of
God, destitute,
a prostitute who sold his
soul
for a mess of nickel and
gold,
a pimp who put a twinkle in
the eye
of too many virgin madonnas.
My knees are calcified,
callous
to this pleading pavement,
these pennies not proper
payment
for such prostration.
I have lived through
too many winds, too many
wars,
my face a battlefield of
random colouration -
the pigment, sour and
chapped,
my mouth a tight slit
spitting jagged hesitation.
In the beginning I was love,
a conjurer of images which
flowed
from passionate heart to
jagged hand,
which filled guttering holes
and stilled the wandering
mind.
I was in my element,
I was sublime.
But now, it’s more than can
be endured:
the chalks burn me to cold
cinders
and I am no longer inured
to the savaging of time.
Andiamo!
2.
In sleeping, in sinking ever
downwards,
in the dull drugged search
for forgotten wings, I am
enslaved
to a triple headed hydra who
I can never know:
a bastard hybrid of Leonardo
da Vinci,
Botticelli and Michelangelo.
Andiamo!
His clawed fingers
clutched around this brittle
body,
my head ground into the
pavement,
skull scraped down to a
pigment
of polychromatic fury.
I am the
jealous Jehovah
giving birth to a tribe of
demons.
I am the
Delphic Sybil
stirring entrails in
quicksilver fire.
Per amore,
andiamo!
Sketched out on these cold
slabs,
I am an icon, a corpse -
my nakedness an invition
for genuflection and
masturbation.
Here, in my lap, is the
Christ child
with lips of lapis lazuli,
a goitred face, sucking all
the goodness
from these withering flowers
that once were breasts.
I am a tumbled chalice. I am a kiss.
I am the rust that creeps
upon you.
I am cut crystal singing
out. I am
rivers running with blood. I am
the apocalpse. I am the flood.
Andiamo!
3.
Such nightmares, such
dreams,
to wake from a paralysis
and find you on top of me,
that I am inside you
and not being raped by the
pope
and a gang of satanic
priests -
I am overwhelmed,
excited, exhausted.
Andiamo!
by the clashing cacophony
of chalk skin against chalk
skin,
the smell of copper
ringing from your fingers.
Andiamo!
My head full of sacrelidge
as you bring yourself off,
squeezing tight down upon me
like a hot mountain.
Per amore!
an unfelt eruption
as the alarm clock
ejaculates
its facist waking call.
Andiamo!
Our overalls tangled on the
floor,
waiting for another day
of uncertain survival.
Andiamo! We must rise up now!
Andiamo!
Per amore di amore!
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