PARIS, 1870, ‘Portrait Romantique’

The portrait Cézanne painted of him was bizarre.
“Romantic…” Cézanne called it at the opening.
“Look at the thick rabbit hair, the
freshness of him! Look at the petal soft lips!”
And it was as if a bone
was waved before a pack of wolves, the way
our heads nodded
with concentration, in time.

But how could he not see, we wondered
silently, collective, how the budded mouth was pinched and drained of colour?
How the hair hunched as a rabbit,
cornered, in fear curls from the hounds?
Those slathering jaws.
We seemed, at once, to lick the backsides of our sharpened teeth
while we questioned, what manner of master is this
who has trapped that pair of hunted eyes and smeared them
wild and black upon the wall?

The only sounds besides Cézanne’s exclamations of “Charming,
isn’t it… seductive,” the scraping of toenails
on the polished marble floor and the throaty panting.

The boy himself crept trembling toward the panelled door
praying we would not smell him
as his father always could and the others – children, men…
aware that he was the chosen one, the painter’s sweetmeat.

How we all spent dim and
tortured hours drunkenly fathoming
ways to be inside Cézanne,
to feel the dens and tunnels of brilliance.
How we plotted the death of the favourite.

The capture and killing were too easy
to be ecstatic, merely satisfactory.
His face looked just like the painting
before it was ripped apart by fingers
and teeth.

We were so many.

It seems Cézanne was a prophet
as well as an artist.

We realised we were glad
it was not us he had
made pictures of, or touched.

And we were full, content,
with nothing to be jealous of
and left to rut
in the alleyways
like dogs.

(c) 2006 JL Williams

Though You Writ Scripture

“Dance boogie wonderland Dance boogie wonderlandMidnight creeps so slowly into hearts”

from The SexY Jihad by Stephen Cullis


Scribe, “edacious” writ unto body makes for ravenous prophets.
Though you writ scripture forget not you are a ruler of starving princes.
Perfect yr hand.

Prefect, this Girl Eden confesses only lies i.e. names her confession
not because she is good, because the food you give her
is an obsequious lie. It is not forgiveness.

Liar, undress yr wounds. These are Roman wounds.
These wounds are Japanese. You bleed from pores. The blood
is light as stars the first occasion them SHON* un the morning.

Scribe, yr garb of wires sparks electric lightning bolts.
Zeus Arcing Electronic of the Genome School, laser scalpels
beam from yr bent crown like thorns.

Scribe, survivors workshop the gestured kerning of yr script.
Capitalise Your Name When You Sign The Wounds.
Electrocute those pilgrims po’faced senseless dead-womb’d high on oil fumes.

Gastronome, starve the tiny bird then offer it rich seed.
Watch it stuff itself then lift ‘tween finger and thumb,
drown in brandy glass. Swallow whole.

Swallow the fig-shaped fruit of believers’ offering hole.
Do not chew the flesh of apple pie-fed worshippers i.e.
the chequered picnic of the saviour.

Saviour, protect the flavour of raw fear.
Eat beneath yr napkin to conceal the shameful glut
of magnanimity.

Scribe, a hundred tiny hands touch yr aorta,
pet and squeeze yr atrium, like birds gyrate on currents
inside yr breached casement.

Scribe, dark swallows populate yr intimate system,
dip their elegant tails in influenced blood,
confess a perfect scripture unto yr masticated body.

*SHON: Surface Hors Oeuvre Nette (French: Overall Surface Clear)

(c) 2006 JL Williams