Unshown in du Musée du Louvre (cont'd)

 Unshown in du Musée du Louvre (cont'd)

       by A-Secret-Member-of-the-Rothchilds Doug

and then when all seemed said and done

a monster leaped aboard

him peotr wroth and filled with hate

lept up upon and cut

from ear to grinning ear nor smiled

and thus the end came to the beast

who till that time all ruled

and soon the lion laid the lamb

and children lovely made

whose like till that fair time none'd known

Worry over the rigidity of the jaw when the labors of a year bring only mild criticism and nothing more. Linger in the knowledge that no sleight of hand, no heart-felt hope, no libation to the gods, no self-inflicted wound will ever reconcile a younger brother to his lateness nor an older one to his duty. Listen intently at coffee break to the conversation of the boss with his secretary and feel the way she notices everything around her then, with a quickening of all the parts that make her a thing. Suppose for a brief hour that you lay now on a floating mattress in the moonshine off the coast of Honduras, the arid matter between water and sky as old as electricity. Ponder the massiveness of whales just a few feet beneath your kayak as you drift through Sitka Sound. Allow yourself to briefly study the dangerous flightiness of the woman your bother will be wedding in another week. Question whether sound slips shoddily into your ear or is pushed in by the force of will or intention. Smell and internalize the whetedness of an unripe lemon ground upon a juice glass and accidentally rubbed into eye and nose. Place in categories all the men who have noticed you and wished to say something to you that would make you happy and loving. Split hairs with yourself about precisely where the desire to live turns a corner and begins to look at itself. Will, for a moment, the death of the need to speak, making the future of your large life a matter to gather dust or to sweep under the rug. Pretend that you are ten and alone in Paris where your parents have abandoned you with a pocket full of francs and with a miniature by Picasso in your small suitcase, as well as two changes of clothing and a Euro-pass for the train. Plan for one evening the meeting of Bobby Fisher and Boris Spatsky in your living room and you lying on the couch watching their dilrny interchanges. Entertain the idea of moving your bed into the garage for three months each summer so that you can come and go as you wish without having to either announce yourself or wash and bathe each evening. Do not covet your neighbor's wife since she is Jewish, plays canasta, comes outside mornings in her ratty nightgown to check on her flowers and says things to you like, "My husband is in Toronto for the week and won't be back till next Tuesday." Drive your Toyota Corolla over a buffalo jump and leap out just in time. No one will figure out your subterfuge. Rev your Suburban's engine till it is ruined and a month to go on its warranty. Give up your time-share at Falcon Lake and the ten thousand dollars invested in it after twenty years because you've grown tired of it, boring as all is there. Plant cigar tobacco and see if you can make it grow in Manitoba. Learn to roll cigars. Specify to your wife the precise tickling that makes you still and content. Loan money to your wayward daughter of twenty-five who follows you wherever you move, even when it is right across the country.