Give me a reason to love you

  

I didn't have a Thing to Wear 40x30x3 cm - mixed media and collage on MDF

 

 

BEAUTY TRAP

 

There we were, snaking over the surface of things, down

the cracked fresco, up the prickly pear. It was

impossible to process so much beauty at one time.

It was like being too drunk to enjoy a Brunello.

Like Stendhal, besotted aesthete, toppling in

some Duomo, we had to take a lot of naps.

But it’s all part of the job: poets have to deal with beauty.

 

The landlord kept certain family secrets

buried just outside our bedroom window.

Or was it a barely submerged septic tank?

Down in the village, a woman, with a cutting edge  

haircut, sliced thin cuts of Parma ham for our sandwiches.

 

We met a self-proclaimed humanist at the Stazione bar

whose primary credential was four years

of high school Latin. He looked like a

hipster Machiavelli. “In Vino Veritas,” he slurred dryly

while hitting on our waitress. Working one summer

in a Santa Fe convenience store he met a man who had

done a photo-essay on Sophia Loren. “He said

she was gorgeous of course but had the hands of a peasant.”

Why the “but?”

 

I hate to confess this but I wouldn’t know a peasant’s hands

If, for the mere fun of it, they slapped me across the face.