Home page Indexes: Authors Titles First lines
Recent themes Early themes
PDF version of this poem
Concordance Random poem
Not Averse
I don’t know what makes art Art
maybe it’s that once I’ve seen it
I can never not see it again.
It lingers violently
like a good Pollock should,
hanging on a nail inside my eyelids.
Is it true that a thing of
(heart-stopping) beauty looks at you
you do not look at It
sees inside you
and lodges a piece of itself there?
Breathless, I stand being looked at
immobile open ripped apart.
Then the light changes or goes out altogether
and I can’t quite remember the first way I saw it;
lost like all beauty.
But knowing that to hold on
would tarnish it all I can do
is let it pass through and hope
I get one last look.