A little glowing picture box
killed the Western Renaissance in 1950.
Leonardo trotting Florentine streets passed
lame, dirty little puppet shows
where plots were ignorant murders
or paternalistic, dastardly rape.
It should've been that, in those cobbled streets
(glowing like the tiles in Billie Jean, with true magic),
as a wise wife ended some boisterous fight,
one of those puppet stages shot from a high window
and fell through the painter-lord's full skull
as he went from his own last supper,
and landed a gory 600 years wide!
It's a simple premise, you'll say,
but what is simple?
What is human
that is not basic?
Only deception.
I watched public conscience scatter
in a year after Kurt Cobain died.
What is it worth
adding causes to a tragedy, like tax evasion
to charges against a mobster?