|
Jeff Bryan holds up his elastic pants
and their baggy promise.
Jeff Bryan is a walking cauliflower.
Jeff Bryan deplores feudal systems
of maximum profit no matter how disguised,
but wave a $20 bill
and he goes into his little dance.
Jeff Bryan is mud
and the clear water that rises to the top.
Nothing clarifies vision as consequence.
All across New Mexico, geologic barbarity
is a rejuvenation to his instinctual basics.
With an enriched potential for disaste
and a completely edible sense of design,
he remains a demon of painting.
One is tempted to describe his style
as the reconciliation of found botany
and the virtuoso act of calm sweet living.
Not bloody likely.
He should be beaten by his wife.
He produces a loud, long call,
it begins as a series of hooting roars which blend
into a crescendo of shreiking
which tapers off into bubbling groans.
An identity of art neither seduced by glamour
nor beaten down by dimwits,
Jeff Bryan has the wingspan of a crane
in flight for ten thousand years.
This last statement is pure vanity.
Many poets of the region think he should be exiled.
Forget genius, allegiance and Jesus,
the wilderness of empty space beseeches him
to engage the fleeting momentum!
The undismayed temperature of saturated color
awaits him with an affectionate snarl.
Mystery treats Jeff Bryan like a woman.
Jeff Bryan is a walking cauliflower,
a cantankerous ectomorph always wondering:
“when” ? or simply “huh”?
Jeff Bryan costs three quarters
but someone stole the nozzle.
Jeff Bryan bought the previous line
for a dollar from Mark Weber.
The old grapes eaten by starlings, arctic weather
and the sudden thud of a shovel enters his soft earth.
Elastic pants have fulfilled their duty.
If result has any credibility, Jeff Bryan looks
to the surrounding presence of trees.
The strange blip of the future
crunches toward his cell-ship.
Jeff Bryan looks over his shoulder,
frightened look on his face—
wife and daughter will find him!
Just enough light left to do something more, but what?
By the time he finds a brush, it’s dark.
|
