[poetry]Elmer and Art

[JetPlane]

Art is a secularly controlled
dream. We scrub it
with lye when we come in
from playing outdoors,
hang its shoes on the rack,
toes-down, polish and airbrush
the corners for effect,
drape our scarves, mittens
and coat over a hanger,
and go in for dinner.
It's warm and smells of potatoes,
your mother, lush and broad,
smiles, her face red and beaming
with her piggish eyes and blistered
hands.
You always remember to dot your i's
and cross your t's. It's a way of life
and you take art with you, held on a
leash, dragging it through lawns and
alleyways, until a neighbor sees you,
your mother is told by way of shrewish
tongue, and you're punished
with a paddle, your bottom red and
polka-dotted with the paddle's holes
and art sags in the corner, dejected
not only from the bruises and pain
you've committed on its shaggy,
mutty skin, but for the fact that you
are grounded and not allowed
to play with it anymore.
Your mother gives you consoling
words, as sweet and gentle as ever,
and you rush back outdoors,
your cheeks flushed, your hair
skittering across your dampened
forehead and art follows you and
you harm it just as before.
Mom washes it and scolds it when
you both come back in muddy.
The audience knows it isn't your fault,
it's society, inclination, animal primitivity,
everything but your own responsibility,
and your mother calls you "Elmer"
kisses you and tucks you underneath
your firetruck sheets every night,
a dream, a promise, for you are young
and a boy, and art curls up at the end of
your bed, tired and easily consolable,
because, in some rare moments, you
lean down to pet it, fondling the place
right behind its ears, and it is happy
until you resort back to your old ways,
lean back in your chair, crack open the
top of your beer can, and chuck insults
at it, as scarring as sharp pebbles.