How the New York Times Hangs Pictures vs. What I Do

Thanks - yes,

I guess

this is a species of what I’ve done here,

although to see it parsed out in the New York Times is queer:

learning there are rulebooks for interior décor

about affixing tricks to flick one’s sight from ceiling to the floor.

It all was so organic when I took

my first electric look

at where I would be living –

irrepressible immediacy! – visions giving

me their sure decisions about where

to put the art upon the walls – yes, there –

and there above it and below:

making up an intimate tableau

as personal and quiet as my mother

was in conjuring that watercolor, and the other

watercolor hoping to abut the loopy disposition

next to it exalting the addition

of two yellow purple crimson creatures

underneath, both screwing up their features

at my mother’s careful bays above.

We all have our ways, my love,

that must attend and be attended to

begetting the excruciating crucially askew

so that my boop-a-doo productions

can harrumph at the serene seductions

of my mother’s seas and skies

as wide as all the eyes

of my menagerie, befuddled

in their frames, puddled

in their reservoirs of hues.

So goes the news

of how my mother’s pictures

blithely overcame their strictures

in the way of ushering the best of her and me

and my menagerie into our likely final destiny.

When I die, she will too, again.

Our pictures probably will tell us when.

.