performance artist

I remember you
wandering around Amsterdam
wondering
where Vincent Van Gogh went
-those goddamn tour guides,
misled you again
but you survived & revived yourself
at least enough to go home & flunk
the U.S. Army physical
“not suitable aptitude for military service”

but somehow you got into the Coast Guard
went to Japan
plunked down your yen
then
blew your wad on a psychedelic whorehouse cot in Tokyo

still,you can’t be blamed
you always said that you suffered
from a sore lack of suitable role models
-shame on Superman for shooting himself in the head
-shame on Shane for riding away & leaving
little Brandon De Wilde crying in his blue denim coveralls
& you too with your blue balls
behind the woodshed wall transfixed
with a gatefold of  nasty,naked Jayne Mansfield

shit kid ! -they got you that time too

ye olde primordial, prepubescent desire
yanking your chain,while pud pullin’ was influencing
& blurring your cockeyed perception
you didn’t really think that Blonde Bombshell
would in reality do the diddy wah diddy on your tiny boyhood
truncated  ding a ling,didya?

such is life;you live, you learn

then when you were eighteen,
you were tough,you were indestructible
until that woman
that war
that poverty, that sickness
brought you to your knees

but in the long run
all that personal devastation made you tougher,
meaner
smarter
so wise
that you know now
that those episodes of dread were
perfectly designed to make you grow some spine
that before, you just pretended to have
behind that opaque facade
that imitation of humanity
that you always could create so effortlessly