Portrait D'Une Femme (1998)

("You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
One average mind - with one thought less, each year." - Ezra Pound)

starting with ski-jump nose
she lined herself out /
----------------------in pixels
with colours (dabs of red, pinks, fleshes), contours,
profile moulded on like papier
maché, makeshift mountain range. map of she. Ezra
keys in the variables and they are
fulsome, somehow stiff, a breathtaking
sphinx of presence, feigned orgasm /
-------------------------------------picturesque illusion. scopophilia, she is taking part /
-----------------------------------------taking her apart,
-------------------------------------turning her over.
masculine camera train'd, where to
trace the borders of beauty /
-----------------------------fix her
eyes to subway tunnel surveillance, figures
of 'lifestyle', 'hysteria', 'tragic' dance
in on her. does she blush. Ezra the troubador
peddling from a market stall on a rainy day.
Ezra touching her up. she's fragile, who knows.
her mixtures her default setting, sat
solemn in pagoda with haiku epiphanies
passing her by. express freight-train batters past platform,
mannequins dive for cover, petals on a
wet black bowery boy. she peels petals from her
countenance, makes all portraits imperfect
while Ezra spins in grave. she dodges
and weaves the headings, the subheadings,
her info can't be passed on, she's pierced
and pinned, persona non grata /
----------------butterfly, lovely, a convenient exit lit up green /
------------------------------------------------------------------projects photomural of forest.