#162 - Diogenes

12.6.20

162

bugger off

or

Diogenes

(John William Waterhouse, 1893)

ekphrastic study

straw tub

scroll grump

you cannot know what I’ve just read

or is that stage business?

in a world of pastel light

I have so many portraits

cast me for darkness

for a snack

onions ready to plant

strew the steps

marble with petals

smug, righteous

still a basket to strew

almost jesus-ing

cannot say ‘he

paves a way’

temple at the top

order Doric

cracked shadows, pines

verisimilitude

Aegean blue

bare olive hills

all black slaves

in the anachronism

feathers, cane fans

it is so as to offend --

spectacle for this bourgeoisie

and for Victorians manners

must be the agora up there

my story in a life in the picture

on the wall in the gallery

safe in a distance

make the morning dim

make an honest living this way

as one who shone a light

in the bright of day


.


and here was an earlier crack at it, from a few years ago 

Diogenes in the tub of straw

(John Williams Waterhouse, 1882)

girls tease at this grimace

and park their petals on the stairs

what drapery to his sackcloth

the one with the feathers most smug

it's all blue and cloud scud

a sun slants in the barrel

the only thing black is a slave

Diogenes had a slave once

could live without him

Diogenes became a slave

but here in Athens

scatter of onions

as if to eat raw

snows behind for his head

an artist of sorts

a coin defaced

grim zealotry

where the city's wealth

won't stick

all day

waiting for a king

to cast his shade

all night

with his lamp

and never finding

an honest man