Notes About The Poem
3/6/2025 for Ekphrasis on Album Cover Art Poetry Contest sponsored by Di11y Da11y
Thinking about Fair Warning
Is there a word for when you love something because it is horrible
and it's horrible because it's true,
and specifically, because it's you?
That's why my chosen album cover
adorns, probably, a fine record,
but not one I have special feeling about,
instead of a great psychedelic cover
from the great psychedelic musical era -
or a cover like that of HMS Donovan,
featuring children's poems put to music
(listen to The Walrus and The Carpenter).
Imagine my surprise, when, grown up, I saw
portions of The Maze, by William Kurelek,
on the cover of Fair Warning, a Van Halen album.
A flashback to being ten,
reading the Time-Life book on psychology
about madness in art.
The cover shows a few of the best scenes -
the boy being beat up
while classmates cruelly feast on the spectacle,
the boy, his progress thwarted
by a brick wall.
These are scenes from The Maze,
self-images
in a painting of the inside of the artist's skull.
We see his memories -
a curled-up rat, dead,
an older boy looking a his own arm,
devoid of flesh,
as if it were not his own,
as death lurked
curiously close by,
a helpless lizard
being attacked by
a murder
of crows,
and my favorite,
right on top,
the boy,
alone and dejected,
in a wheat field -
thrilling,
shocking,
lonely,
to see,
in an artist's work,
oneself.
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