The Gorko Gazette

THE GORKO’S MISSING! SELECTION FOR 16-22 SEPTEMBER.

nothing is everywhere

all my life I’ve been waiting
for some babbling
stream to trundle up the backside
of a mountain for a flower

to sing for a bluefish to swim
backwards for the amber clouds to carry
me off all my life waiting

for that chilly spring
morning when dionysus pulls into
the harbor in a cigarette boat and calls
me aboard all my life

it has seemed it was just
there almost palpable
like a smoking thundercloud tumbling
down a hillside or a doorway into a gallery
of softly lit kimonos but nothing

nothing was ever there
and now I think that if it wasn’t
a ruse the only true
miracle is the miracle
of nothing
at all.

---

the queen’s head

happy hour is over
and the music has died
it’s quiet in here
everyone’s gone home everybody
but me and the barman
and the once-beautiful woman
with a painted-on face;

she’s drinking vodka gimlets,
and I am drinking pale ale
and we are not speaking though only
about three feet
of universe separates us
we pretend to be as foreign
to each other
as orchids and carburetors

even when the barman retreats into the hole
in the floor behind the bar because
he needs to bleed
the air from the lines of a keg
even then when we are left
alone together on our stools
under the pernicious principles
of man and woman

we say nothing to each other
and just sit there pretending
we have nothing at all in common
but perhaps our thirst
and perhaps that three feet
of universe and perhaps the vague
consciousness of a demented voice
speaking out of the gaming
machine in the corner.

---

frog prince on the metro

at louvre-rivoli, a middle-aged
man with a shabby overcoat
and an accordion slung
over his shoulders
boards the train. he peers
around. his eyes are shaded
by the brim of his battered fedora.
french eyes. heavy-lidded
eyes. he’s got the eyes
of an artist from a faded
daguerreotype. the door
slams. the train lurches.
he adjusts his footing
and begins, fingers frolicking
fingernails like little clamshells.
I watch a light iridescence
spark off his nails
as he gyrates
with his rig, beats softly time
with his foot. then, when he is done
with his rough magic, he draws
a small leather cup from his case
hands it to the lady sitting to his right.
she looks at it vaguely
passes it on, and around
it goes. then it’s back in his hands
his eyes reminiscent of that child
in the fairy tale
peering into the fathomless
well where her golden ball
has been lost. in the fairy tale, a frog
offers to retrieve the ball,
but here there is no frog
or ball, just a cup containing all
the emptiness of a monday night
in paris.

---

troubadour night

love-axe fallen, wits split
listening to Vivaldi’s Mandolin
Concerti as I douse myself
in a €3.99 bottle of French wine.

I take a sip: it’s dry, fruity,
light-bodied, lightly bitter
with a hint of almonds.
at least that’s what the label says.

my tongue’s too dumb to discern
these things however and my
heart’s run off with the poison
from the woman as her rings

and her handwriting and the
mandolin float in circles
around the room.
this is how the troubadours
did it. music
on a stringed instrument, poetry,

french wine, some treacherous
beauty in absentia, a kind of
alchemical process charging
the air. I sink in my chair.

a light fails. the glass pours
itself. mayflies and yellowjackets

go round in my mind.

---

aquarium dream

sucked in by the chaotic stream of images colors
flickering lights shiny people you’ve spent the greater
part of today sitting in dull morbid lethargy
scrolling tapping circling staring growing outraged
feeling numbed feeling mildly amused envious abused
feeling duped it’s the great booby trap of the age
to sit in some safe and sequestered space departed
from the fire the bacchanal the birds
the mountains the fish
the flowers yourself the spirit departed.

---

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Images generated on Magic Studio, collage by Raddy

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