Staring at pictures of the planet, Venus,
he saw in an issue of Popular Science,
going back to Jack and Khrushchev;
aimlessly flipping the pages,
he speaks of when he took up arms,
and charged the Roman brigades-
in circled arenas where lions dined
on believers of Christ and the Baptist,
not long before hanging on Golgotha;
said he cried for the Man who’d been Crucified;
his eyes now fixed…movements are vague,
his mind jaded from clear juice,
his breath, sore labored from years of abuse
in Marlboro Country…the cough is disturbing,
so, he pauses…then asks for a match.
I look up at the clock he’d painted black,
the one he crafted one night in the rain,
numbers smudged and surreal;
thought Duchamp and Dali had the patent on this;
macabre of a different kind,
as if it really made a difference;
and I think to myself, how merciful
that nebulous entities guide him-
as time and logic are as close to him
as Macedonia And Venus…
FjR-MMXVIII
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