Exploded Anagram

Don’t ask me how, but I find myself fallen

Into a landscape by Giotto.  Except, I’m

Shaped like one of the egg-people that

Guston might have drawn.  Everybody’s

Staring.  I’m smaller than a stroke of grass

And I’m wobbling hard to exit harm’s way,

Before a big naked foot gets painted over

Me.  Were there more details to the little

Things that don’t matter, I could count lines

On the sole to see how long this titan has

To live, or see what sort of fungus gets a hold

Of these delicately sketched Renaissance

Toes.  This reminds me of the week I spent

Trapped in a photograph of two squirrels

And an owl; the owl was off-camera but 

Present, a threat to the already nervous

Rodents who were eyeing me as though I

Might be a useable seed or a useful acorn.

My presence here is losing its significance

At an alarming rate, and if the raptor should

Decide that there is potential meal to be had,

I fear for my safety.  I feel like a canvas 

Having colors removed instead of the oppo-

Site, the slow disintegration meant to add plot,

Or tone, or character.  Or anti-matter.  As though

The removal of shades of vermillion and cori-

Ander will bring the whole into focus.  As though

Eventually this blank slate will speak of the legions

Gone before and what black hole is left replaces

Absence with overwhelming presence, our mere

Insignificance akin to the incidental rock Giotto

Used as backdrop, of the cowl that Guston hid

Our humanity through.  It occurs to me that I’ve not

Written a poem about you in a moment or two,

And that the last one I did write suffered from 

Disease of first, disappearing phrases, then blank

Words, then letters gone the way of the floes and ebbs

Of tide:  the sensuous L, the wrecked K, like an H that

Has hit a wall, the gnashed grind of particulars and

Ordinances that could be distended and exploded

To eventually make coherence where currently none.

It is this way with the fragmented elements of you 

I am come to understand.  I preen and fluff and all

I get is dander, and failing that, the chance to be

Fodder at the trough, and that falling away, the view

Of a sole of a 5-inch tall titan’s foot, searching me

Out in my hood, finding me, and absorbing me into

The landscape before I have the opportunity to count

The lifelines, to tell him how long before I will connect

These letters, make words, imply color, before I can

Explain to the phrases, to the poems that they’re all

Here for you.

©2012 – Mark A. Douglas – All Rights Reserved