Poor Dorian. Left in the attic
to fester and decay, unrecognised.
An unlike likeness blistering away
in oils, not blood and bone, while
the flesh escaped downstairs
to toast the Queen.
Old Hieronymus Bosch got it right.
Torture, carnal desire and death
stuffed in a sickly landscape
oozing from the frame.
'The Garden of Earthly Delights'—
No way out. We are what we are.
That’s what he said when he left me:
‘We are what we are.’ Pompous prick.
It was sex and the sixties that bound us.
The good old days.
My portrait doesn’t work, doesn’t suck the flesh
and smooth the lines. I’m still the same
when I open my eyes,
still in the Garden.
It’s time. Wasn’t that what Whitlam said?
The pills are kicking in, I’m outta here.
We reap what we sow.
Bosch and booze.
I’ll drink to that.
Cathy McCallum
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1 comment:
Happy Days Are Here Again
and 'tis is decadent in its description. Oh! the power of poetry and wasn't Wilde the man for the job?
Hieronymus Bosch, 1450 'twas the year he sprang from his mother's loins, hopefully a decadent year in the Netherlands. And Oscar could have loved him too! Jeroen Anthonissen van Aken was his name in the good book of baptism. His moral colourings were quite descriptive; particularly the Garden of Earthly Delights. Therein decadence aplenty for some, much like your garden in the poem, eh Cathy? But not for the pompous prick who must now be in some dark, dank cavern, wondering what he missed after all that decadence in the good ol' sixties
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