PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
from Jan Bogaart's photos, Eindhoven
from Jan Bogaart's photos, Eindhoven
In the football stadium, a congregation of clergy in
drag.
Sequence cut to championship fucking finals
in the south of Catholic Holland,
(where else, says Jan, the photographer.)
Used rubbers hanging from the numbered pegs
as contestants candidly look on.
Everyone's masked for the ball,
even the hookers smoking in the wings.
One wears a chador, naked from the waist down,
well-dressed in nylons and heels,
the star whore in the gurney
chalks up 187 men—all in a night's work.
Michael Jackson, David Bowie and the Pope all at the
mike.
Sequence cut to a small town in Bavaria
where Hitler built a train station for Mussolini,
with love from the good old boys.
What of the gay queen at the carnival,
white face, questioning cartoon eyebrows?
The mist covers the crotch of the valley's shame
gravestones covered with plastic to protect them
from winter.
It's a white Bavarian Christmas.
A woman forcefully serenades those gathered,
a nun grimly serves tea. Smiles cost money and time.
They are celebrating the alleged birth of Christ
with a vengeance.
The oldest woman of the village perfers t.v. to the
villagers
who can blame her? Others watch their homes
destroyed.
Michael Jackson's face would support whole villages
of old women.
Masked young men come down from the mountains
to beat the villagers so they will fully repent for
the occasion,
only the offer of a drink will silence their sticks.
All in good fun, they said, nearly breaking the photographer's
hands.
All in good fun, said Hitler as the ovens burned.
Did he drink schnaaps too, his mask more natural;
it took a while to see it slipped only to reveal
another mask,
mirrored beneath into green infinity.
Cowbells, a saint's crozier, unsmiling men fold
their arms
in front of tannenbaum; the creche child in a coffin
of hay
one man grimaces for the camera,
and other smiles while the fool looks on,
a full complement to the theater of saints.
9/92
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