Tyler Wettig: Men in Togas Looking at Fruit

Copyright © 2017 Tyler Wettig This Digital Edition of the Revised Second Edition of 2016 was created by Tom Zimmerman in August 2017.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Portrait of the author on front cover by H. Babij Artwork on pages 5, 9 by Frances Ross: www.facebook.com/littleprawnart Artwork on page 7 by Herbert R. Schroeder (1930-2012) Artwork on pages 11, 13 by Anthea Leigh Artwork on page 15, 21 by Jérôme Rieu Artwork on page 17 by Hollis M. Photography on page 19 by Anthea Leigh Photography on page 23 by Mud Keagle Photography on back cover by Jérôme Rieu All poems and concepts by the author.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“New Prophets” first appeared in Let It Be… Spring: A WCC Poetry Club Anthology.

“Robert” and “Bleeding David” first appeared in Paradigm Shift: A WCC Poetry Club and Out-Space Anthology.

“Romanticide” first appeared in Honk If You Love Weirdos: A WCC Poetry Club Anthology.

“Endless Fascination” first appeared in The Huron River Review, 2016.

“Roll the Bones” and “Lover’s Graffiti” first appeared in Vine Leaves Literary Journal #17. zetataurus press ann arbor mi usa tzman2012@gmail.com

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Men in Togas Looking at Fruit Contents New Prophets Bleeding David That Night That I Died Romanticide Robert Man on Fire Summer’s Glory Endless Fascination Lover’s Graffiti Roll the Bones

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New Prophets My muse wore a halo of thorny wildflowers and smiled faintly— walking on wet leaves, speaking in lotus tongues, reciting surahs to my soul.

I once followed them to the fifth circle, where the hills had eyes and the walls talked— no longer a distinction between church bells ringing and bottles clanging.

And when the meek, not the weak, grew wary, I carried their cross through the reddening dusk, where the bruised and bleeding became new prophets.

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I let no man drag me down so much as to make me hate him. —Booker T. Washington

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Bleeding David Forget the passion, the foreplay— my ideal idol is one in which the full, mysterious, gentle beauty of biology is carved in stone.

I want to experience the climactic, speed-of-sound, intestine-spanning moment where life, magnificent creation, flashes like a lightning bolt before Michelangelo.

I lust for an idol of promethean vigor— shoulders broad, posture stoic, and a rack wide.

I lust to be Michelangelo struck, falling off his scaffolding, perchance to say: now, I have lived!

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That Night That I Died I dreamt of being forced to swim in human excrement— it was a place where beauty was but razor deep but laps placated infection.

When I woke, I find myself Googling how to be emo and sharpie-carving a Yesenin mantra onto my wrist: There's nothing new in dying now, though living is no newer.

As nights ovulated into dreams, my stigmata continued to menstruate new mantras— And in paraphrasing the likes of and

I hate myself and I want to die How I’m going to do it

my eggs of melancholy may finally hatch under red snow, beneath the midwinter sky— no brooders.

And in signal-phrasing Fred Mertz, those chickens are going to freeze their fuzz off.

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Romanticide The first time I could declare love for anyone, I did for my kindergarten teacher: Two husbands are better than one I would say.

But years later, the true tapestry of chemistry has at last been unfurled— its credence no longer of meaningless, youthful disposition, but of the shattered glass and echoed yells of a romanticide.

And Don Juan In Hell I become: but as the wisdom of I Love Lucy imbued in me, Don Juan is a story about love— it has nothing to do with marriage.

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Robert I weep at your demise, your perfect moment of rugburning desire.

That wilting pistil ejecting petals of a forbidden seed sprouting not creation but contempt on those nights I’m sure you mused to Debussy.

Those Manhattan street lamps below you, overbearing in their acceptance— no more than your darkroom, your world in grayscale: giving off more light than the begotten fruits of your irises like pots of gold at the end of your stream of negatives. *Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989), American hero known for his erotic photography

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“I don't think," he insisted. “I feel.”

—Patti Smith, Just Kids 13

Man on Fire On the eve of my twenty-first, I roll through the Ypsilanti night contemplating insurance fraud.

Behind smudged glasses, I see prostitutes— bounteous in agonizing courage, bathing in neon light.

The libido’s flames sear, but I just want to buy one of them a meal because we're not so different really— my scars, their track marks, psyches thin like the ice of Saginaw Bay that Dad and I used to walk on.

Tomorrow, I’ll visit my Mother’s grave.

I still don’t know where Dad’s is.

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In that we are always preparing to be happy, it must never be that we are so. —Blaise Pascal, PensÊes 15

Summer’s Glory (To the Mullalond Clan) Imagine not the realness of Heaven For I have surely seen Heaven on Earth; Imagine not the realness of Angels For I have surely feasted at their hearth.

Imagine a realm where winds whisper In infinite entendre songs of love; Where at the sides of Angels sits the child Who sings with the voice of a thousand doves.

Imagine realms of peace like Walden Pond Under eternal Alabama skies; Where beauty blooms and amber shimmers dreams And down the grotto on soft grass he lies.

Amongst flora and fowl he frolics and plays Day after glorious summer’s day.

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Endless Fascination Just weeks ago, I had no idea disco was en vogue; but, to quote Fred Mertz, I got wind of it.

Well, more like a tempest— my whatever senses suddenly inundated with visions of John Travolta eating pizza; or perhaps my neighbors are just reenacting that scene where John Travolta tries to convince a guy to not jump off a bridge (someone else may need convincing soon).

Why not move out?

Why not complain?

Is it an abject fear of this disco dancing troupe?

Is it their party van that threatens to uproot the foundation of a three-story apartment building?

Maybe, just maybe, it’s that I’m slightly perturbed that their leader wears a white suit white gloves has white hair and doesn’t smell of fried chicken.

Why not move out?

Why not complain (again)?

It’s endless fascination: something like those colorful characters of Lucy Ricardo’s novel— the realization of, as Fred Mertz put it, the bending and twisting of the ordinary like pretzels.

It’s ageless fascination: something like the exquisite pleasure a middle aged man derives from a fetish model following him on Twitter.

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It’s timeless fascination: something like standing in Walgreens at midnight as your friend tries to show you a diagram of a female uterus.

This is synchronicity, and these are strange things— but as the wisdom of I Love Lucy imbued in me, We’re all odd, aren’t we?

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Lover’s Graffiti It starts in the Salvation Army— a gangly man, chin dragging on the dirty floor, soft-shoes past ladies’ shoes and half-goose-steps past coats.

John Fogerty’s Centerfield plays over the loudspeaker— put me in, coach, I’m ready to play!

At the end of a vapor trail of womanly essence, he happens upon a white shirt draped over a dressing-room door, and batting an eye like he just pop-flied into the stratosphere, he bulls his way through the door toward a hopeful second base.

He slides into shortstop, clad just one layer beyond his satisfaction.

A glib apology masks his stymied libido as his saliva rewinds back into his mouth like the VHS tapes hanging from the ceiling near the hair curlers.

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Roll the Bones There is implicit irony in traversing the weird world of an Indian restaurant on Thanksgiving— snapping tradition like Joe Theismann’s bird leg.

The dust particles of our party’s content displaced as a vagabond enters with a how you doin’? hawk-eyeing the goat curry at the center of the table, bones sticking out like a pestle and mortar— a symbolic encroachment upon our morality.

He rattles his change-cup, and neurons in my brain begin to fire: high alert achieved as he goes to hustle near the buffet.

I hide my empathy behind white knuckles as I recall hustling Tic-Tacs from CVS for a meal to be shared in Dad’s Ford Tempo and midnight ruminations on choosing between dish soap and toilet paper before declaring: forget the band; I’m selling my synthesizer.

Even in these days where the clouds seem to stay parted, I still find myself eyeing my own goat curry: that placebic, wanton sustenance— granulating ‘til death do us part.

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