Artichokes, Avocados, and Van Gogh

I slept beneath
a mad hatter moon and
dreamed of a big blue
tarantula swimming in
a yellow moss
covered pond. A rat
terrier passed me a note:
Mercy and love
are
fleeting, they fade away
like the
tangerine sun; they
are lies like
the dead bulls under
a bloody red
Spanish sky.
I asked his name,
“Mendacity,” he said,
then turned into a
pack of
cigarettes, no matches,
no lighter…

I drank from the
pond and became a
sunflower.
Vincent shot
me with his
lonely cornfield gun.
He sat down and smoked
his pipe, as crows
lied
lied
lied.
He said with sad, iris eyes,
“It’s impossible to fuck
a mermaid, or eat
a starry night.”
It’s the impossibility
of a thing that
drives one
mad;
like a mustang
caught for the
circus, but always
dreaming of escape to
the thundering
fields of its youth.
I saw toothless
orphans throw rocks at
his soul, as those beautiful
eyes saw way too much…
I want to
pound
it in,
drive it dripping
home through the
core
of a rose, to the
bottom
of the tulip. I’ll
get drunk on
nectar of the gods, then
reject immortality. (Who wants to live forever?)

There has been a drastic
Mistake.
I see it at the
zoo in the
monkeys caged,
glazed eyes.
No wonder they
throw shit
at people.
“Such lies, ” he said.
“The artichoke, avocado, and
algebra; the small of
a woman’s back and
the emerald head of
the hummingbird.”
“If the artichoke and
avocado is lies,” I said,
“then truth is the
tight, tasty, creamy
green line that
refuses to settle or waiver;
delirious, delicious.”

“No,” he said, as
his hands stroked
that lice-ridden
crimson beard.
“Its conception and
growth, then cast
out
bloody and naked
cut from the
cord,
and a lifetime spent
trying to return
to the womb, cock first,
but only spilling and
spreading the
nightmare of being,
the fever of living, to
another
sorry soul that didn’t
ask for it.
I woke up,
drained the elixir,
and stared at
Vinnie’s self-portrait,
the one with
bandaged ear, and
I
thought…
Yea,
God is into practical jokes.