sf moma

someday, after you’ve taken all your pictures, they’ll put you in a museum where you’ll sit smoking a jay. birdman.
you’ll hang with mutu’s misguided hierarchies, eating yourself, riding your own side saddle exhibition.
at night you’ll jump off the wall and make your way over to henri and the girl with the green eyes, who looks right through you no matter what you say.
you’ll cajole and tickle and whisper you fickle little…stuck-up and rutted, too good for you, or so she says, but really doesn’t. perhaps she’s autistic.
late then, henri and others guys named max gather and sing egg-fish, egg-fish, won’t you be my daddy.

a reprieve. an intermission. call it what you will.

now a time for floating heads. ink driven bodies that bow down.
mr. klee, mr. klee, won’t you be my daddy.
no john, you’re being ridiculous as usual, but give me a hit of that and I’ll show you one you’ll like. it’s called horse and man, a sly gesture of reversal of things to come, if you will. or even if you won’t. if you notice the red arrow and the…you’re not paying attention at all are you.
I am, I am.
what are you looking at. it’s the woman with the green eyes again isn’t it. don’t you get it, she’s not there, she’s never been there. he started that painting with the eyes you know and, jesus why am I wasting my time, fuck off will you. go see if joan’s still up.

the oval smile like it’s seen you before. joan has a ruler, a tripod, a compass needle that always points to the nearest bridge. today it points towards frida’s eyebrows on its way towards the bay. even then says joan, skin, the small scent of my oval and musky, diego. always, men. short and squat and folded over like hillsides. like vaginas. like the oracle and the green bird.

you notice then that crowds cost nothing. that the earth jags and moves earthquake-like, panic-like, and indeterminate voices, some of them, grating along the just polished tile. but you get used to anything, sweat down your back, wind in sudden bursts blowing like the underside of a hammock, blowing the joint ember red. paul says let me have another. paul never has any of his own smoke. you hand it absently over, still staring at her eyes which refuse to follow you anywhere.
joan says is that a pen john.
yes.
you know you’re not allowed to have pens out in my museum.
what’s the difference joan, and when did it become your museum.
rules are rules she says smiling. here, take this pencil.
I can’t write with a miniature golf pencil.
she hands it to you anyway. you make a show of clicking your papermate closed. when she turns you unclick quietly. it echoes off the air in the rooms, so empty. three walls away the woman with the green eyes gasps without her eyes moving at all. you walk over and give joan’s oval two new eyes all the way through to the wall behind it. she runs over to cover them with her hands, like a woman trying to shield a child from something she shouldn’t see.