ripped apart like a daisy oracle
huddled in the empty arms of your real estate
i turn you over in my mind as on a spit

Fillmore alleyway window frame fat woman,
drunken, at kitchen greasy oil-clothed table
half gallon carton of milk and a fifth. Dark,

Fillmore alleyway window frame fat woman,
drunken, at kitchen greasy oil-clothed table
half gallon carton of milk and a fifth. Dark,

when i’m in someone else’s new york style apartment
i like virtually anything that’s playing on the fm radio
when i’m at home i can’t find anything that i like

   What are you cutting down, my boy?
   What are you erasing?
Off the bilgey bottom, off the petrifying weighs

Apathy and delirium sun themselves on the porch.
All the old dragons loll along the beach.
Such lightning has rather a hazy lurch.

And this shall be divided. For her
a tine to clip the bloody twine
that bound our meat, tine to pierce

The last toddler's howls evanesce like ash
on a breeze, the parking lot empties of cars.
A purple shock of cotton candy rots

The maestro, in his Paris hotel, clicks
the television on. A girl with a purple mohawk
chops at the Wall with a hatchet, blasting

after an oil painting by Peter Doig

As is always the case with Doig, we are on the inside.
Outside, this time, is a coast we all know.
The view is ideal: the day has reached an end,
the water is mostly still, and the moisture in the air
makes every light into a star.