He saw the Mona Lisa on
an ancient wooden power pole
one San Francisco chilly day,
Surrounded by a murky fog,
a thing of strange consistancy,
a soft translucent wall of air
Pushed aside his probing hand,
he tried but could not touch the child,
still smiling through five hundred years.
A crowd assembled, curious
at his pale arms grabbing air,
"What are you doing?", asked a girl.
"Don't you see?", the man replied,
"Her face, her lips, her guile and charm,
the slyness in her gentle grin?"
A boy, quite small, ran to the post,
and said, "I see a poster there.
It says, 'Reward for my lost cat!'"
They smiled and laughed, not at the man
but just the gentle joke of it,
as thickening fog spread round about.
He turned and moved into the crowd,
now silent, gray as lumps of clay,
they fade into the darkened day,
While, down the street, the boy cried soft,
"Here, kitty, kitty! Here, kitty kitty!"
The man, alone, remained distraught.
He turned and faced the splintered post,
which smelled of creosote and tar,
and saw that she remained aloft,
She smiled at him and knew his soul,
his secrets, sins, and failed loves --
naked, though still clothed, he shrugged,
He walked away, his eyes held low,
and, guided by low booming horns,
he found himself at water's edge,
And took the ferry waiting there
across the cold and choppy bay
to an empty house so far from her.
Chaos writes with windy pen
on dunes of sand and frothy sea,
cirrus clouds aloft, and then
Erases all before we see
the transient text that's hid therein.
She makes a breeze beneath our door
and tricks us with her icy chill,
freezing feet both rich and poor,
Whispers with a voice quite still,
while scuttering frost along the floor.
Carefully mounded garden leaves
spout up in twisting jets of air;
she throws them up into the eves
And casts them down upon our hair;
confusion reigns while she deceives.
She moves the air in many ways,
a gentle touch, a typhoon's blast
slanting rains from storms just past;
She whimpers, rages, laughs for days,
the words she babbles forth don't last.
So, though the message can't be read,
still, it's plainly understood,
that Chaos birthed our world and said,
"My work is neither bad nor good,
in fog you stumble, then you're dead."
Bluster & Absurdity 