Occasional Impressions

The Gemini Poets

Poem written in Florence

Snotty-nosed christ came to renaissance florence a thousand times
filled his artists with Beatific Vision
& some degree of intellectual precision
a new found joy in the awakening vision
of God as a breathing aristocrat.

snotty-nosed christ walks around florence in the eyes of
assembled potential visually Gods.
snotty-nosed christ never gave one artist
the means of taking the hump off the back
of a woman who sits in a bar.

loyally copying man as he is, they cracked around slowly
& copied the world to do quite a job
of making lumps beautiful
making crutches and cripples praise in the glory
the gift to the artist by snotty-nosed christ.

an artist can only hold a mirror
& paint a portrait of the volume that spills
through the polished marble of his excavate skull.
An artist can only hold up his body
& try & pretend that it’s his, not a gift
from an aristocrat to the nation.
ijf

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