Eight: King (poem)

 

 

 

King

 

Artsy is the acquired name

The King of this domain not cute, believe it

And swords don’t pull from stones, but a crazy with a knife

was witnessed once

Things happen on the beat and things get made

only for use    but color

color is a natural    it’s a world

ready-mosaiced in cheerful throwaways

when we end we’ll float awash

on plastic—no hate—is a great material, bendy, easy to cut

and free, unwelcome, easy to get

and if you know the nitty grit

you don’t worry about the future, well ahead of it

I have to get your permission to publish your picture

Someone said

Like, royalties?

No, for a story.

And they can’t get jokes, so the hand is digging for change

There, the King would tell his real subjects

Is your best sign. People don’t carry dollars, they don’t need em

One day, when one of these foreign emissaries wants to help

It’ll have to be, buy my product

I have a product

Besides a personal sense of style they want to steal

They want to film an apocalypse with an unpaid cast

And I don’t mind    I have a home to go to

They think I’m wrong in the head, too dumb

A sock, squashed in the gutter, one thing I got today

It sat on a foot, now it sits on mine

You see, I draw it in, I own a little piece of everything

That’s what I am, a vessel to the universal flow

I’ve got lives in my empire, a phone that holds its data

A sacred text for the coming prophet

A lady’s bag, lifted, not slashed    Empty

but a Life Saver… Wash it. A linty Post-it

 

And here is how I reconstruct the crime

 

 

 

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King

The Tunnel

Queen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2021, Stephanie Foster)