Xxxxxxv. An Allegory Of Time Poem by B. R. Dionysius

No doubt some thorough American manual can give you the low down on Europe's margins but mine, designed for only one traveller is better written & much shorter. Besides, if you remove the art, Europe's like the US, more or less a dead loss.

John Forbes, Europe: a guide for Ken Searle

Three ruby jewelled seeds
free fall between the pomegranate's
cosmetically enhanced skin
& the forefinger of the pre-pubescent
Christ child. This fruit stigmata;
pre-Christian underworld throwback
makes Martin Johnston pause, smile,
push his glasses back up the long
wall of his nose. His left hand
combs through black shoulder length
Velasquez hair, stump-jumping over
the Doric capital of a hidden mole.
His Italian hiking boots squeak
like a pair of Inquisition
thumbscrews turned up to the max,
inches across the polished beech
fingernail floor. Bosch's demented
figures take on more of that
tortured look. Bite down hard on
the afternoon's touched up flesh.
Further on, St Francis dances
on the head of a leopard to receive
the crown of thorns from Jesus
& Martin, turning a corner, enters
a scene of true chaos.
Two deranged men, a fat, thirty
-something Australian & an elderly
American tourist jostle each other
over a plumb position to view
Picasso's Guernica.
Martin, distracted by the sound
of security guards about to pounce,
doesn't hang around to see the fun.
Splits this sad Western ex-pat scene
& skips casually over the next
couple of centuries; thinks about
the five hours he queued once,
to get into the Uffizi Gallery,
& the one hour it took him
to go through it.