Poem: "Alla breve"

Alla breve

Why do
painters, painters
of houses,
beards matching
pigeons, drink
five red
Coke cans,
flush, with
stories of
houses under
their nails?

In painted,
empty houses
they follow
hair, hair
floating to
final destinations,
tangle sticky
in distracted
spider decor.

Loose tufts
waft white
as milkweed
from fingers,
caught dry,
on hot
biscuit tongues.

How did
they seem
painters, painting
then, young?
Stand in
cotton, hair
blown, against
trees? Still
bright summer-noon
teeth, big
pie sliced,
bottom-lipped smiles,
cutting the
eye of
their grin?



               - JVH