For Larry Connatser, a great artist, who died of AIDS

You lay on mounds
of bright blue pillows
and flowered sheets
A stick figure like
the trees stripped naked
in my garden of cold frozen
January

I recall the night that I
played Juliet, my leg an iron
maiden, while you staggered
beneath my bedroom window
As the stars made a crown for
your dark curly hair
The night of the art show when
you loped up the stairs two at
a time to pop open a six pack
held hungrily to your lips
like a baby suckling the cold
can of Bud

You were an odyssey of life and
death debating each other
painstakingly recreating her
black hair twisted in a braid
that hung down her back
That black witch

Eroding before my eyes
with the plague of the century
I recall your bony fingers as
they once stroked the ivory
keys of your baby grand
Beethoven Chopin Brahms


Ripped from your innocence
by eroticism
you search for long ago
parents to paint among
the ancient Greeks on canvas
and board
in brilliant shades of
red green yellow
to escape

The devil deep
within your gut
slashes and strokes as you
create your own private hell
for all to see

And like a snake shedding
an outer skin you dare to
become
I long for our midnight
talks of life and death

Good-bye, my Renaissance man
your left eyebrow has
been carved from the beauty
of your face to rid forever
the cursed disease that ate
away at your skin like
ants at a Sunday picnic

You lie pale and drawn
gasping asking for a
slice of key lime pie

You quote me Kafka:
Art should serve as the ax
for the frozen sea within us
Now shrouded in your sheet
your are like Micelangelo's
Pieta motherless


by Miriam K. Center