the artist, facebook poem #9
Jay Sizemore

He once was a whirling dervish,
now he pulls horses out of molten glass.
The hot air inflates his paper lantern lungs,
hardens the statue, sets filament aflame.
He wrote a song about belly buttons,
learned to run code for apps,
dressed himself as a skeleton
riding the skeleton of a mule.

Herman Melville asked him to enjoy the sun,
to put on a red, white, and blue gown,
to be high and mellow as an antique shop.
He imagined Otzi: the iceman
as a monster manifested
from a classic celluloid reel.
There was a scorpion on the wall,
lighting a cigarette.

He criticized fascism and the Koch brothers,
was emotional during memories of Albert Einstein,
dreamed of a woman with an old address book.
She sipped Coca-Cola from a melancholy glass.
She wore strange jewelry.
He often thought of her while doing yard work,
the way she smiled at parties.
But of course, she was a fireworks display,
and he was a love letter
written in the language of goats.

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