october in the blood red earth
or
how i got arrested at the national gallery, london
with
apologies to
jack kerouac
staring at the van gogh’s, i see, peripherally,
two children
running by, chasing each other with sunflowers
on the cover
of newsweek magazine,
eyes lidded but i know they are dead
because it says so
in the headline
people flock to look at irises and lily gardens,
greens and pale yellows
mix with the red at the feet of the photographer
and on the
sweaters, the strings laid casually across
her neck
as if put there by the wind
in the cornfields; the peasant bends down
to retrieve the bright golden
husks
which are placed in wooden coffins
made too small
i scream at the people studying
slanted, cubic faces, faces with large brown eyes, oversized
and
looking at themselves, studying themselves,
through the people
i am screaming at
i am crying on a plane bound
for
london’s heathrow airport
at thirty-three thousand feet
and
seven hundred
and
fifty-four kilometres per hour,
trying not to let the passenger next to me
notice that tears are streaming down,
the face of the virgin,
the face of a little angel,
dried out by the forest air,
and her sister-friend-cousin
lying next to her
sur l’herbe
and i am screaming again as i nail this poem
to the wall to the immediate right
of van gogh’s starry, starry night,
and the security guards try to wrestle me
out of the room
but they’re not that tough to fight off,
they are only the sad and old
and incomprehensible
and they need to call others to wrestle me
to the ground
and i’m screaming, screaming
can’t you see? can’t you all fucking see?
are you all blind as well as stupid?
can’t you see the little girl
on the front fucking cover
of newsfuckingweek magazine
for october the fucking 12th
and do you see her executioners? her assassins? her murderers?
walking and studying and holding their hands to their chins
in deep, contemplative thought
of a bright, yellow glaucomal chair?
do you see the uniforms, cerulean blue, ruby red, olive green,
it doesn’t matter
they’re all the same,
struggling to get me under control
trying to smother me under their combined magisterial weight
but they can’t, they can’t,
i’m too strong, i have to much life left me
i am strong and can eat, shit and blow my nose any time I want to,
i throw them off
and yell
do you see? goddamit?
do you see her sandy blonde hair, limp, strands
straggling out from under her hood
which the killers
put over her head
so that they wouldn’t have to look at her face
when they shot her,
when they shot her….I don’t know where they fucking shot her…
but i can see her face clearly and so can everyone if they look really hard
i have a picture of her in my wallet where she is one year old with a soccer ball
in her hand, smiling for the camera, honey, the nice man is going to
take a picture that we can give to grandma
i could get on a plane and go there
but
she would be buried
and
the mourners would be dying
and
halfway across the world
another picture would be taken
and
people would go on studying
the van gogh’s
as i sit and watch
the two young girls
running across the floor
chasing each other
as their mothers and fathers
cross their hands
and
wonder at why that brushstroke is there
and just so thin
at that particular spot
but over here it expands
and see…here it is raised from the canvas
as if he wanted to have us feel the earth
underneath her feet
i sit and watch
and wonder
why my head doesn’t explode
right this very moment,
scattering the nearby paintings
with bright, red
blood
bathing the people in bright red
blood
and wondering, just where did van gogh get
that particular shade of red
he’s used
i sit and watch
and take out my son’s picture
from my wallet
and thank god
it isn’t me
much like the others
studying the pastoral landscapes
of provence
that look to much like
the earth underneath
the dead girl
on the cover of
newsweek magazine
for the 12th of october
in the year of our lord
nineteen hundred and ninety eight
amen
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