what baudelaire had not heard

what Baudelaire had not heard.
	
	An unborn poet
	stood in his own darkness,
	an internal structure of wire,
	obscured by a bundle of rags.
	His emotions protruded
	like a twisted tongue
	through the iron grate
	in his stone wall.

	The stage illuminated
	and rocky lips
	cracked and uttered
	a tangled growth
	of hollow feeling,
	a replica
	borrowing words
	from the sound of nothing,

	thinking
	any stone monkey
	could scatter commas,
		crumbs for the pigeons.
oil, collage on photo, 20" x 16", 1998
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JAMES W JOHNSON