As he worked he stretched the face;
soon it was unrecognizable.
It was like sheets of rubber, twisted, beginning to tear.
There were drips and dribbles, as if it were etched.
In fact there was no other way.
Sometimes something just seems right the way you do it.
From the audience came exclamation points.
Birds rose from a swamp and headed south,
flocking together as if in fright.
Anything to be out of that vicinity.
Hoyle the scientist, Hoyle the novelist,
was mugged while hiking in the Scottish Highlands.
He fell 300 feet, but landed in water,
Refused to die. Explicit refusal.
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So there! compare that to the turtle
which dropped out of the sky and killed Aristophanes.
Bopped him on the head.
Nature typically recognizes distortions
and makes them the norm, the standard by which the rest of us
must peddle our wares. This then you must know: Fish fly incidentally,
fry from intention. The intelligence of crabs.
He got down off the scaffold to examine it from a distance.
If he were really Francis Bacon, he would paint it that way.
That’s just how he would imagine it, distortion a true reflection of his life.
He wished he was god, and could blow everyone off:
send all of them down into the pits, an answer at least,
one that Dante would have given. And be done with it:
God Almighty squatting; sitting on a toilet.
If he were Jackson Pollock he would spatter the canvas
until it made a different kind of sense.
Paint flying, scattered clouds on a windy day.
It is really, and particularly, terrible when the set pattern to which you must adhere
is that which you have created. Mutatis mutandis.
We are all locked in to what we are.
He looked at the face.
It was like examining himself in a mirror.