Friday Night

and I am half-scuffed with grief

                  a red diamond on a red ground

drop of condensation from the brandy glass

                  my mother would give me for a sore throat

have you heard of Raoul Dufy and is it said like Duffey?

                  and I haven’t heard of The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889 in too long, like, 18 years. No one’s spoken of it in 18 years

Franz Marc’s Blue Horses, though. Someone’s told me about them, someone said, “They look like half-plums or men’s butts in bed.”

                  and then the grief was like a yardstick sutured to my spine with baling twine

or like a truss to my resolve, which splintered in a million moon-sherds

                  and about my grief, someone said, “A child could have done it.”

Someone said it was like a bean rubbed so the skin sloughed off in the bowl

Someone said, “Your grief is Rousseau’s lion looking over me as I sleep.”

                  Someone said, “The Four Elements looked better with older cars behind it.”

Someone said, “I see now why this book was free.”

                  and how I feel about Philip Johnson is

he designed the worst and best buildings in town

                  and how I feel about this brandy is

it’s the color of a soaked bean and my throat is half-soaked in it

                  and the other half feels like a red, broken stick

and all I want to do is sit in the grass at St. Thomas and bitch about its buildings

                  because that’s what Philip Johnson would want me to do

                                       because I think we both regret how much we’ve made glass