Short Museum Satori

One of the reasons I dig Starla
is that before we went
into the museum she let me
have a cigarette. I was
so excited! The assignment was
to figure out why a guy like Rembrandt
was so great while everyone else sucked.
And I’d just read some diatribe
about a poetry movement that’s been dead
for seventy years and now
ensconced in academe, so I was ready.

It occurred to me that the first time you
deface a crucifix or put up a big red painting
with nothing but red in it, it’s like, okay,
I get it, that’s witty. But the second time?
Or the third? Pretty soon it starts to
look as if you’re masking the
fact that you ain’t got no talent. After
everything’s opened up the philistines get in.
And looking at the master I felt the real
rebellion in poetry ought to be to write
with meaning and time as a construct and unrequited
love and the fear of a world gone to shit
and autumn leaves and kids crashing
against each other and use language in the right
way. If you can’t see power you’re going blind.

Matthew Freeman's new book of poems, Ideas of Reference at Jesuit Hall, was recently published by Coffeetown Press. He holds an MFA from the University of Missouri-St Louis and has conducted workshops all around the city.