Catfish McDaris

Intense sheer walls painted
hyacinth and saffron with
brushstrokes of scarlet sulfur

Searching for silver spoon to
make sotol and datura for sun
tea and going on a magic trip

Dangerous peacocks in a raspberry
sky, green sleeping ducks by the
cattail forest and melodic stream

Rainbow cutthroat trout leaping
for the gnat hatch, fat frogs burping,
loons and cranes on stilts hunting

Vincent thought about the dancer
at the Crazy Horse and how she'd
asked him to steal a Van Gogh,
he painted her one instead.
...

Coltrane in the Van Gogh rain,
"Hey Fish, what you working on?"
my boss, Big Joe Cocomo asked
he was from Texas, my black pals

At work loved me being a writer,
I showed my latest to Joe, he said,
"You like Trane?" I nodded yes
"What are your favorite songs he

Plays?" "Lazy Bird and The Night
Has a Thousand Eyes" "You must
have taken beaucoup acid, back in
the day? Who's your sketch of?"

"Vincent Willem van Gogh" "Not
bad kid" we both laughed, since I
was twice his age, back to Gauguin,
he lopped off Vincent's ear with his

Sword during an argument, they
agreed to say it was self-mutilation,
to keep Gauguin out of prison, van
Gogh never recovered his rationality.
...

Thinking about Vincent's madness
layering paint on canvas, thick
plaster colors, mountains, valleys.

An earthquake in Italy killed 100's.
a one-year-old baby was hot in
Milwaukee, he tried to climb out

A window and the window slammed
down on his little neck, killing him.
a woman put her baby in the refrigerator

To cool down, she forgot she did it, her
man comes home three hours later, goes
to get a beer and finds their dead daughter.

An eleven-year-old girl was riding her
bike, the driver hit her dragging her for
three blocks and kept on going, drunk.

Vincent, you died at thirty-seven, you
are thought of as a freak that cut off his
ear, I see you in the swirling starry night.
...

The sky was drunk, the sun puked lemon
juice, the moon had a toothache, the lady
asked the dope fiend to come to talk to
Jesus, he smelled of absinthe and funk.
...

When the lilacs bloom
their purple scent intoxicating
the air, the white bass run
in the Root River

My ladies & I catch
three & cook them over
a pungent fire on
green sticks with herbs

Most fisher folks take
stringers full & stop
at a place & clean
their catch for hours

They look at us quizzically
as we feast & wiggle our
toes in the icy rushing water.
...

As I paint
I think about

Van Gogh painting
sunflowers & irises

Degas painting ballerinas

Cezanne painting fruit

Gauguin's Tahitian women

Frida Kahlo capturing sadness

Neruda & Li Po painting
with words

I wonder if any
of them ever

Painted a bathroom
with ordinary
white latex.
...

Al and Cat met in Paris
they ate some horse and
crepes and strawberries
near Jim Morrison's grave

In the Metro many men were
pissing on Willie Nelson post-
ers but not on Francis Cabrel
Cat knew a chick with a friend

They were dancers and they
loved sliding upon the pole
after hashish and vino, there
were two smiling happy poles.
...

Sorcery and witchery still flourishes
people need protection, salt strewn
around an encampment helps ward

Off demon attacks, corn meal mixed
with gall of an eagle, bear, mountain
lion, or skunk is potent medicine

Witches live along the Rio Grande,
they steal Mexican sheep and cause
death, beware of shape shifters

Brown and gray corn known as maiz
de brujeria should be avoided, healing
elixirs are mercury, Gonzalez herb,
guayuli, and powdered turquoise.
...

The snow melted upon her skin
hot drifting desert sand blown
smooth hungry and beautiful

The two wars inside each person
go on forever, love and hate
the sky always a gun barrel blue gray

After she left all was loneliness and
one can on a table the label read
DEATH, eat it before it eats you.
...

Mary ripped off the bandage, his brain
tumor was visible, the treatments had
made him worse, she made a blunt

From a grape cigar and some red bud
Columbian, Quick's mouth watered in
anticipation, he told her to put on Tom

Petty singing about dancing the last time
with Mary Jane, he toked hard on the herb
he dreamed of the Louvre and Whistler's

Mother getting out of her rocking chair
and walking like an Egyptian, the Thinker
bumping fists with him and La Gioconda
shedding blue purple crocodile tears.
...

A flea on a red hot chile pepper,
ginger on the cream,
ringo on the beatle,
sting on a cop,
a prince, the king,
the slash, the edge,
madonna, a lady,
jimi, the boss,
the kiss, the godfather,
queen, rage against a machine

Hunting hummingbirds with an Uzi,
trying to sleep in a buffalo stampede,
dozing on the tracks before a Santa Fe chief,
it's too late to leave a good looking corpse.
...

The color of rage, anger, love, hemorrhaging of the sun
on the ox gore face, velvet cocoon eyebrows ready to
fly away, you can live your life in a birdcage or soar
over oceans, mountains, jungles, swamps, and deserts

The bus and trolley accident broke Frida's spinal column,
collarbone, ribs and pelvis, fractured her right leg in 11
places, and dislocated her shoulder. Frida had polio and
one leg was shorter and the bone thinner than the other

She underwent 35 operations because of the accident, Arias
her boyfriend was with her in the crash, he described the bus
as "bursting into a thousand pieces," with a metal handrail
ripping through Kahlo's torso, many were injured, two died

Something strange had happened. Frida was totally nude. The
collision had unfastened her clothes. Someone in the bus,
probably a house painter, had been carrying a packet of powdered
gold. This package broke, and the gold fell all over the bleeding

Body of Frida, when people saw her, they cried, ‘La bailarina, la
bailarina!' With the gold on her red, bloody body, they thought she
was a dancer, Kahlo's path to painting began with the collision,
the greedy are selfish fools choking on a gluttony for gold
...

I see ears in the swirling starry night.
the sky is drunk, the sun puking lemon
juice, the moon has a toothache, the lady
asked the dope fiend to come to talk to
Jesus, he stinks of absinthe and funk.

Sometimes at night I meet
myself when I was young,
I disgust myself now

What color is the wind?
What color is an orgasm?
What color is death?

There is no sea of tranquility
There's no such thing as a small miracle

Drinking Mexican coffee as black as death
Lady Gaga drives up in a dirty Mercury
they head to the Valley of Rhinoceroses

Listening to Swordfish Trombone and
Bitches Brew overlooking Mexico City.
...

Seeing a golden finch or cardinal eat from a giant sunflower
hearing Chickenfoot or Los Lonely Boys tear off a riff
watching Romeo Must Die or Lonesome Dove
smelling fresh strong coffee or buttered popcorn

Gazing at Prince play a solo with 3rd Eye Girl
feeling a cat brush and rub against my bare leg
getting a half laugh smile from my daughter
when my lady of thirty years kisses my bald spot.

***
...

When my lady is happy, singing
in Spanish and French and I smell
the perfume of Mexican vanilla,
cinnamon, cloves, cilantro, and sage

The cats are purring on the bed
and the snow is melting and chives,
garlic, daffodils, and grapes are
looking at the sun with love

I smile inside I no longer care how
much money I have or owe, or that
I don't drive or my hair is thinning or
that I'm closer to death than life

I put another quarter in the parking
meter, laugh at the shadows and think,
my turn to pull the rabbit from the hat.
...

I'll be the exterminator in a flea circus
play trombone in a bedbug parade
the worm swimming in a sun yellow
bottle being shared by alley skunk skanks
until their eyes fill with death tears forever

Kahlil Gibran saying: it's all love baby doll
or David Lerner: people hear my poetry and
weep, scream, disappear, start bleeding, eat
their television sets, beat each other to death

Change my name to December Q. January and
swim in the Sea of Tranquility and to the bottom
of the Mariana Trench and find a mermaid harem
and send up poems in bottles and never come back.
...