The beauty of an exercise like this is that you can turn out something quite
different from what you usually do. For better or worse everything here is
intended, the repetition, the weird rhyme. Just the way it happened.

TALKING OF MICHELANGELO

has turned desire into whimsical anxiety
its comings and goings an iamb of all kinds of gossip
walking in and out of the grocery store
contained in sealed tins and crackling packets.

The acceptance is that potatoes all wear jackets
for all transitions involve a version of death.
Where snakes shed their skins so do we,
among our daily artefacts to prime existence.

Outside each door the classes chatter among themselves
though the boundary between each one never closes.

The medicine for each sleeps in separate doses
unreached until talk gets round eventually to Michelangelo
and a sense that beauty from his age andours
could not have long to go, as levity continues to grow.

Michael and Joe from further down the street
repeat the wisdom they have learnt, so sweet,
repeat the words to a drum, its electronic beat
contrary to each heart it comes to meet.

Outside the door the classes chatter among themselves
though the boundary between each one never closes.

Leonardo, the storekeeper, knows of greater wisdom,
though only in sound bites and hourly newsflashes.
Michael and Joe make their passes at girls as they talk,
come and go in short dresses, exchange all the gossip they know.

Uneasy minds make blue sky thoughts, force issues as they talk,
talk, talk and pretend they know as much as Michelangelo.
Round and round they go as night follows another day
and nothing will go away until talk returns to Michelangelo.

bw
James


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