DANGER: FALLING ART!!

for my dear friend tmar ettingen, who has been producing art for over 40 years

DANGER: FALLING ART !!


i am crawling up
into the early years of your paintings;
negotiating the narrow passage
to the attic
where all the frames are leaning
in the heat and the air
is too thick to breathe.
     
      and here are 2 million electric moments
      frozen and removed from your heart
      and mind; they have been not
      quite sleeping up here for too long

i can hear them whispering. as i sweat,
hunched over, first, touching the odd frames;
  they are catty, shy, arrogant, demanding,
  and bitter at their treatment, ashamed
  and quite indignant to have been so consigned
  to this ignoble space; and, as a group, quite smoldering

        i know now why the wide, unnailed boards
        have been groaning after midnight, beneath
        the weight of all this clamoring art;
        like a great hunchback, trapped in the tower;

and why you sleep with the smell of penned-up dogs
seeping down, all over you.