My Friend the Starving Artist by John Heckman

Slam-spanking hip,
a gin-grin.
Curled tubes, smeared.
Canvas rub-smudge, prismatic.
Called art when tequila worms
were the main course.
Madness benign,
lurked beneath your tray,
collage cubism you would slur
and the gallery bohemians would sip
dry white

pretending they knew their asses
from their trust funds.
Your painted nudes with middles
of mashed potatoes
and rhombus shaped tits
smirked in faceted wedges
tempered in sfumato.

Not Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
by any stretch of the canvas
although you shared in the barbarian form,
aggressive interpretation, quixotic.

You mainlined distilled grains
like a morphine drip.
Methadone memories
tripped
your schizophrenic fingers
into lightning strokes of color
rouge-faced, merlot lips, lemon-skinned,
and your whores disguised as nudes,
descending.



John Heckman is currently works in 'Big Science' studying quarks at a National Lab in Virginia(www.jlab.org). He's married; no yard apes, and has two dogs.

He's been published in 'Blood Jet' an e-journal and juried publication and has work accepted by 'Samsara' an e-zine debuting this summer, and 'La Petite Zine'. He also has a published abstract on cryogenics in an international scientific journal.

Last spring he helped his Professor teach an introduction to poetry class at an adult literacy program called 'Peninsula Reads' in Newport News Virginia. For fun he likes to sail on the Chesapeake Bay, work in his yard, and write poetry.

Back to Table of Contents