Five Poems for Vincent

The Chair

This raw, unpainted, left-hand edge,

With multiple nails in-driven,

I regard as a wounding of sorts,

A ripping away of all fatuity, make-believe,

A stabbing down and into the truth of the matter,

And all this surely does matter…

See for yourself! It is only a raw webbing

of crude-made, brown-weave canvas after all,

Fit to hang raw in the damp of a midden

Were it not up here on the wall of this bedroom…

In fact, in all this wounding it is myself that I see,

Scarified by all my hauntings,

That which forever must lie beneath

Any smoothness of surface

(Of which there is so pitifully little),

Any garnishings of fine-minted words

Of which, from time to time,

I do seem to have been just about capable…

As I was too, it seems,

Of making this fresh conjured chair

Out of fiercely tamped,

Rough-textured brushstrokes,

Home-spun, four-square

And dependable as these words

Of pitiful description must now

Try to make it, for this is all of me.

Should I then invite you to agree?