Tuesday Evening Lecture Series,
Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth

Anxiety is the violation of our expec- tations and the penetration of our perpetual narcissism. Education in the arts is exposing oneself to anxiety and bloody coming to terms with it.

--Dave Hickey

What to make of the tweed-coat costume
The speaker is wearing tonight.
What to make of his luminous head,
slick gecko scalp in the exit's reflection.
Mouthbreathing.
Ponderous.
Our grandfather behind the podium, quoting himself
with a heavy lip of lead.
He is heavy with unwanted fame.

Well, he's Advanced-Semi-Famous,
not a magnet in the kitchen,
but he doesn't seem to care about us, anyway.
Or about his woolen muffler
in this stuffy room.
He is misconstrued, he says,
and is worrying us all with his health.
The labor of the coughing.
The choke on timbre and rasp.
We hope that he won't hemorrhage
before he writes another essay.

Audience enraptured.
We're almost in love with him, aren't we?
Let's two-time Pavarotti, just this evening.
Fawning on a bludgeoned troll
in trousers and shirt cuffs.
He sips at his fist of soda,
shifts the luggage under his chin,
and we give in.

Someone is chewing ice behind me
and hoping he'll mention Mapplethorpe,
but this mis-whiskered sage
is fresh out of controversy,
and dried up
while ever more bloated.

He tires.
We are a nation of listeners,
at once overcrowded.
A country in collapsible rows.
He wins our vote.

I'll bet mid-sentence he drifts
to his gas log fire in Austin.
Can't go home until we do.
He wants to cry
like Pagliacci
in Gucci pajamas.
Or lie on the floor,
just a slain tiger rug.