Back Next The Image and the Zoo

The image is before me
what really has the image?
I want the concrete!
But the concrete
has elephant smells
it stinks of urine
it bleeds
it has feces spots
I see it is flabby
skin covering water
Yet the image is before me
and the image holds me
its earth without dirt
it is shape without blemish
it calls me to earth
but earth has dirt
The elephant house is fine
in the mind
but in the zoo
it stinks
but still my image
has a baboon's pink ass
and it demands I smell
not the fart in my mind
but the fart on earth
until I fully realize
that earth
has dirt.

Irwin R. Shaw - July 12th 1986