To the Artist's Page                     To our home page

To Jane Butkin Roth's previous piece     To Jane Butkin Roth's next piece

Bull

I know a man,
an artist with contemporary style, 
who is enamored with elephant turds.
He chooses to confide in me,
explains to me the process: 
the molding, shaping, curing as
the shit takes form.  I feel his 
passion, the adrenaline rush 
of his artistry in motion.

I attend an exhibit in his honor where
Harvard-educated and big bespectacled experts 
come to admire his elephant turds, 
which have been transformed into
flags, bookshelves, even schoolchildren.
It looks like bullshit to me.
     
Thoughts drift to tomorrow's poetry workshop,
where I'm the impostor, not a real poet,
my lines as flat and dry as the Mojave. 
     
The real poets drench their paper 
in rich symbolism, literary allusion, and mythology.
They twist and sculpt their words 
like my friend with his elephant turds, 
turning something into something else.
Sounds like bullshit to me,

but tomorrow might be the day 
I become one of them 
by osmosis; so I'll take my place again, 
like some fat, stubborn rock, waiting 
to sprout flowers from no roots.
    
So far, no matter how hard I try
to see things differently,        

the sun, to me, just shines;
the sky is only blue, 
and sometimes, 
yes sometimes, it just plain rains.

To the top of this page