Photographs by M. B.

Battery Acid

Overview:

I don’t want to know.
Good partnership;
Because you don’t want to tell me.

Location and Lay-Out:

There is a wide white room
That I found in meditation
I reached it in a furious dream
Of self-authored mantras
And three famous haikus
With 7-5-5 structures
Emerging from my wounded temple
Like the picture of health
As I smoked a cigarette
Amongst dead and dying flowers
I complete a sexual metaphor
With a novelty silver key
And enter sanctuary
A woman could give birth in here
And no infection would set in
This is where I will have children
This is where my children will die
Like a small-town prairie epic
Drowned quietly, and late at night
With great resentment
By some secondary personality
Whatever.

Rising Conflict:

The dark side of the art world:
A story chiaroscuro
Artificial shadow
Arranged lighting choices
Clumsy attempts
Remind me of teen-aged sex
I’m talking 14
WHAT A JOKE
And I’m in it
Practiced in punch-lines
I seal the corners of my eye-lids
To the re-animated corpses
Of wet blankets extraordinaire
Irises like runny water colors, haters
I climb my silver ladder
To rise above
And create the moon, and the tree-tops
Embracing odd and primary numbers
As well as all even multiples of 11

I spend hours making love
With a chip on my shoulder
I have made myself immortal
In decorated fortunes
Running ceaselessly through proverbs
Like a boxer in repose
Never stopping;
There were problems I ignored
Threats of forfeited financial investments
That got under my skin
I asked questions of my elders
When the troubled thoughts oppressed me
“Cancel the cheque,” he said
Offering me candy
Other times personalities clashed
And I felt like a drunken bystander
Emerging in a scene explained
By 3rd edition psychology textbooks
There are rules
There is protocol
Take one break to drink coffee
And get myself oblivious
I sit back and wait for the orgasmic conclusion
Fingers interlaced.

Obligations of Partnership and Contract:

My friend
I look on you with fondness and regret
Working together
In our own private worlds
We enter into each others orbits
To collaborate within a new universe
That you made possible for me
And there were unforeseen damages to you
In a separate agreement, a relationship
You had forged with care an patience
So ugly, how it hurt you
And I commiserated
So completely
You will never know
I feel your over-all success
Running parallel to mine
And though there were absences
Sometimes, agitations
And I was frightened
I forgive you of it all
Because we made something beautiful
And it is unforgettable
How you so casually changed my life

Climax:

A soft green night
With well framed tensions
And I melt like battery acid
Into the flesh
Of all who do surround me
A bouquet of local idols
To drift between
Like a rare honey-bee
I am draped in an interpretation
Of the South-African flag
And feel solid gold
Hating to say goodbye
I escape without witnessing the murder
Between sweet friends
Who adore me willfully
Telling me softly
Success is a silver ring
“Happiness is a girl with freckles on her tits.”

Dénouement and Inspiration:

On bended knee
I listen to bra-burning radical speeches
Entering the room at all the wrong times
Make a darling fool of myself
The gathering crowd hates me for my minor perfections
To me they are meaningless trappings
But I get off on the disapproval
My temper is manageable
Passion, I cannot restrain
It was written silently along the walls
But before that
On his body
On those contours I have known
With finger tips and ink
The red eraser
The touchstone of my life
For him I cramped my feet in worship
Involving myself so deeply
That I would emerge
Not the same
But fortified explicitly
And he celebrated me
With delicate affection
And wrought iron support
All along
He made me sure
That I was sacred
With stylized lettering
He inherited my soul
This ephemeral gift
My monument to F. J. L.



The Overview: