Perpetual Adoration

Perpetual Adoration is everything illuminated––
Beads, twins, rainwater, one word sutras,
The horseman with suit made of lightbulbs
Riding bareback into the Botticelli crying room,
The demonstrators dressed in black on busy corner
Holding winter dusk candle lit signs
Of a nude woman with a huge Persian rose.

Epidural neon mint green vulture,
I have a very modern comments system
Filled with sailors in the desert digging up paintings,
Classified photograms that do not exist,
“Impounded data” on the Alabama duck hunter
Who shot an angel & the woman in peach shoes who
Sued herself for making her own life miserable.

I thought I had found my own calm center,
But am amazed at my despair that grows like a
Fashion shoot in front of a head start massacre
As irrational leaders in measured speeches
Wash dishes in the dark by the silk organza bus stop.
I am responsive to every detail of the world.
Not having a sickness is its own kind of sickness.

24 January 2003

© Jim Cohn