Self Portrait with Palette
Advertises the "Early Years" run
At the MFA. Still gluey and wet,
The twentieth-century all-star
Is given false eyelashes and a scar,
Plus a surrogate, crudely drawn

Breast dangling by his head.
Requisite mustache is next.
Weeks go by with nothing added
. The sad confidence in his eyes
Survives the Halloween disguise;
Plus, the vague suggestion of sex

Never hurt a work of art.
Soon, however, he's pulped
Into a cubist portrait:
Face an unreadable smear
And a rip where there once was an ear,
Captioned "Mike Tyson did it."

A constant parade passes by,
Commuters whose indifferent
Half-glances seem to signify
That there is little more to say.
The world changes from day to day
And all our early years must end.

-published in Birmingham Poetry Review, Fall/Winter 1998