Performance

Outrageous oxymoron, the body!

Desire and disgust as one,

Wonder and danger.

Is it here that all my confusion begins?

Inside and outside,

No connection.

This monstrous unknown

Hoards infinite enchantment.

I am driven by furies

To scry images of bodies,

Mystery and destiny

Made flesh.

(The Esquiline Venus,

Smoothed and simplified,

All blemishes denied,

The cold poise of death).


Skills and guises disintegrate

When lust ramps on its prey;

Banal, we cry, alive yet dying,

Full of reversals and pains.

These small stakes we place

On the whirling roulette wheel…


Photographer, predator,

I smell the chemical thrill

Of images, inexhaustible puzzles

To baffle and beguile,

Moments real and unreal.

There is no guarantee but hell.


Offering the artist

Her nudity,

The model,

Watched and worshipped,

Forgets her fears

Of old age and death,

Mesmerized for a while

And mesmerizing.


Pierre Bonnard’s iridescent nudes,

Nervous mass of scribbled wishes,

Endless approximations

Only giving to take away,

Dreams of effortless felicity,

A painted surface after all.

Only as it crystallizes

Does the image, recalcitrant

And bizarre, mock the maker

With the revelation

That once again his powers

Have failed him,

Led him- as he so boldly tries

His limits- astray.