Look

Look

I want to write a poem about a dying town’s last museum
Admittedly there weren’t many museums there to begin with
But however few there may have been this museum is the last
I want to write about the curator who clasps his hands
Behind his back as he walks through the rooms he curates
A man who’s always had an eye for beauty while being
A quite ugly man himself something he seems almost proud
Of because the story is in line with his sense of himself
As being something of a Quasimodo whose duty it was
To ring the bells of Notre-Dame while for our curator
His is to renew these rooms every few months for
The old women who totter in on Tuesdays to walk one
Another through them and who will make some comment
About there having not been much of a change since 
The last time they visited but simply switch a few paintings 
Around he’s learned and they act like they’ve never been 
To the museum before so new does everything seem to them
And I want to write about the sad way he goes to the window 
To gaze out at the yard o one of those rainy October days 
After Halloween after all the leaves have fallen and are 
Beginning to blacken under the trees so that they resemble
The scales on the back of a great black fish I want 
The poem I want to write about him to include the day
When he was a boy walking home from school with another
Boy who all of a sudden stopped and blandished his 
Penis sort of wagging his hips to make it sway without 
Once touching it and they never said anything though 
They’d both grown up to be classmates through 
Junior high and high school and furthermore how 
He’d seen this man again though no it would be 
More accurate to say he saw a man who he’d known as a boy 
At a reunion and even then when you’d think they could 
Slap each other on the back after a few drinks and one 
Of them say Hey remember that time you or I but no they 
Just stood there talking about how rough the town was looking a
As if they were standing by its bedside him wondering 
Whether he remembered and if he did whether 
He was wondering whether he remembered and remembering
Was wondering whether he remembered and there is a painting 
He quite hates and that I want to put in the poem too 
And how often he thinks of taking it down from where 
It hangs and breaking it over his knee or taking an axe to it 
And burning the pieces watching the canvas curling up
Before the flames even reach it and the paint panicking beginning
To run in psychedelic colors the painting is of an old lady 
In a ruffled lace collar holding a poodle on her lap he hates 
The way the poem would say the painter seems to have tried
To suggest a connection between the lady’s lacy ruffles 
And the poodle’s curls what would it even mean if one grants that 
They are connected it was one of those lazy conclusions
He tried not to make a difficult task in that dying town
Like trying to keep your head above water by treading
With your arms locked against your sides but then one day
The day this poem will take place on he realizes what it is 
The painter has been trying to say to him through the painting 
All these years of his tenure as curator that there is 
No essential difference between the lady and the poodle
Because each is a consequence of the other and so are 
Equally incapable of surviving in the other’s absence 
Hence their codependence it almost didn’t matter 
He realizes who is holding whom and this is the part 
Of the poem where he should remember the day 
The boy who exposed himself to him exposed himself
To him should remember it was snowing and that he was
Worried that the boy was cold and right here is where
He should remember the way the boy had looked away