How Did You Two Meet?
This artist girl I met asked will you van gogh out with me?
so I told her don’t matisse me
cause there was a renoir going on in my head
mondrian to myself if I should ask you the same
so she gave me her number and made me promise not to dali
to not forget to kahlo her soon
and I told her honestly I’d definitely rembrandt
and invite you to a charming munch
and she said she knew a great greco place
with some real pissarro lighting and decor
close enough we could almost hopper there
and I said that idea filled me with klee
and she said don’t worry about splitting the monet
if you can rothko right now because I invited you
and I said no you’ll pay basquiat since the pleasure will be all mine
and she said I think you may be my next duchamp
and I promised her I’d not bosch this opportunity to win her heart
and that night her clothes maybe didn’t cézanne.
Careless Miss De Milo
Nod at the bouncer door men and take miss venus de milo in
to the mob owned disco with a hit about to go on
to the abandoned warehouse rave outside the city limits
to the hipster jazz joint where everyone stomps their feet
to the piano duel cafe where lovers propose in the champagne
to the cowboy line dance hoedown rural boy-girl mixer
to the hole in the wall dive with regulars who never leave
to the arena rock stands amid hundreds of employees setting up
to the municipal orchestra auditorium where the cultured hobnob
but her arms were nowhere to be found.
Ephemerality Is Easy
A life of hanger-on hedonism and nights of fun
suave with the artist avant-garde zeitgeist
in adventures of the city’s after hours exclusivities
enmeshing in the friends-of-friends social constellation firmament
but he always regretted not constructing something permanent himself
or becoming someone others stayed up late to be around
and every time he’d try to work on something artistic
the height to scale to finish it made him dizzy
and someone would call about someone else being in town
and he’d party and black out
getting a bit of face time with a cultural luminary
but wake up not any more eminent himself
and decades slipped by of buzz mirages chasing celebrity adjacency
a blur of always having a good easy groupie time
but a cascade of dying friends gradually erased those nights forever
and his gasconades clung to repeat stories at tables getting smaller
of all the various immortal minds he had met but never joined.
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