THE STATUE OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH
Look
down Hieronymus:
the
blonde kids dancing at your feet;
barrel
organs churning songs out
against
your deaf and cheesed-off ears.
Blink
blind, stone eyes,
cobble
cheeks,
dig
the electric pleasure garden,
frame
the nuclear canal
and
sigh you weary statue you.
Chipped
cloak,
cold
painter’s
nose
drips with rain.
Drunk,
we piss on the past,
slash
and splash against the dark canvas.
Bosch,
we still play the games.
I
catch an angel barmaid’s eye
and
swallow the blueness of it
in
my aching head.
Beauty
lodges overnight in the skull.
Unlucky
Hieronymus:
missiles
haloing your frown of a brow;
clouds
crashing over the market square.
They’re
building the greatest nightmare ever around you,
but
your hands have grown too stiff to paint.
Keith
Armstrong
