...Van Gogh Mono...

Can I get a witness

to my mental fitness?

Does the wall

upon my clock

drip with paint?

Is my total being

what the Tic Toc Man is fleeing?

Does the harlequin

within me

see its fate?

Does the pendulum that's swinging

see the fluid time it's flinging,

'cross the landscape

that makes up

my mental state?

I see my world turn yellow

with a charcoal lifting halo,

for the arc

across the sky

has brought me hate.

Is rejection what I'm fearing?

to be shunned and pushed away?

I've got problems with my hearing.

Cut my ear off yesterday.

Van Gogh

hears

in mono.

Everybody samba!

Ó90 Jack David Hubbell

   ...An Achilles Resolution...

This has to do with seeing red, 

but such is not necessarily a bad thing. 

This has to do with knowing that 

red originates from deep within you, 

but again… not a bad thing. 

Oh, of course there's some pain involved, 

but it's not too uncomfortable 

considering I've a three to four inch gash 

in the heel of my left foot.    Again, 

I'm more mesmerized by the red. 

Let's cut to the quick. 

It was a boating accident. 

The prop.    And now 

I'm face down on a gurney 

in the emergency ward. 

Some white smocked intern 

has been diluting my heel 

with sterile as opposed to lake water and 

letting the tainted blood drain 

into a small stainless-steel pan. 

Chattering away, there comes a point 

where he goes to stand up and 

one of the buttons on his smock 

catches the lip of the pan, there 

causing it to pitch up and vomit its contents 

down the front of his pure white outer garment. 

The empty pan goes clattering to the floor 

and from his aghast lips I hear, 

"Oh my God! 

Oh…my…God!" 

And there I am… 

A portion of me coating a good portion of him, 

and this fluid portion of me is so horrific 

that he feels compelled to call forth his god. 

There beneath my blood’s baptism 

has he perceived 

divinity or pure evil? 

Tis a dilemma of dichotic moral magnitude. 

Here he gingerly steps towards the door 

and lifting the smock to contain any 

further corruption on my part, 

scurries down the hall in a hasty attempt to 

rid himself of that which is me. 

Another intern, having seen red 

   surging down the hall, 

comes to the door to see that 

which is me upon the gurney and 

that which is me upon the floor. 

From his lips come the words, "Oh shit!" 

and I quickly come to realize 

my perceived status in this world 

has come down a few rungs. 

Looking down to my left, 

I can see a swath of me 

spreading out in a 

dark crimson arc across the floor. 

How much of that there on the floor 

still qualifies as 'is me' and 

what quantity now falls under the status of 

'was me'? 

And then, of course, 

how much of ‘whichever’ 

is simply shit? 

Would he have labeled me as such 

without some deep personal conviction? 

Lying there on the gurney, 

I come to realize that through the eyes of others, 

that which is me falls somewhere between 

the realms of the sacred 

and that of    shit. 

I myself believe I fall between neither. 

No. That which is me,

lying there on the gurney, 

is perfectly happy to savor the existence of 

the here and now, 

exquisitely laced with a

slow throbbing pain. 

An existential pain, 

which though minor, 

is steady 

and seemingly 

without end. 

 Ó04 Jack David Hubbell