23: News
Just coming to the gathering, they say to him,
remain soft as a lamb, sharp
as a fang: be an old boy, eat the sandwich,
have a barley drink with townsfolk. So natural.
Her hands rub print media into every life, slather it
on backs;
he speaks in
the great robed rhetoric.
Her tongue is the worst eraser. A blotting
mechanism, it moves across hungry spirits
twisting gaussian blur, masks, layers, edits.
The picture is worth
a thousand meetings because in it he smiled for the dead.
The dead crowd's faces and hands are Monet's: The Scream.
Everyone gets chirpy
in the hall, so
unlike the birds and peace of morning, so beyond Monet's brush,
so willing
to forego the brush for the pixel.
My mind is a television says the mic. Monet is nothing in here.
The scream is, my god, a laugh. I'm killing them.
Turn it up.