nose holes, ear gulleys,
eye craters and mouth tunnels, as if the land itself were replica
of his own body. Or rather, those circuits of cave
grottoes had grown as familiar as curve, valley, orifice, hollow
of his lover's body, and Franz
was hellbent
to
share them-
one and all-
with his young disciple, as eskimo forks
over mate to a houseguest ...
For workspace,
he gave Winfred free and unlimited use–
sole access-to his tool
and machine shed,
haven of the older man's
two decades as an inventor. Franz's secret hobby had lain fallow
for the past year, a time of giving over mechanical
discoveries for the arts. He turned his hand to metal sculpture,
often salvaging the old wrecked
apparatus-pipes and gauges,
rubber tubing
from failed inventions-in totem pole high rise
collages: Watts Towers in L.A.
a prototype
for his free-flying buttresses, his catchall
mul tistoried accretions of lofty
pnze-wlm1mg
mosaics. Two best tierworks
found permanent niches at street corners, monuments of the cross–
roads, for all passing traffic-donkey cart, minibus,
fish shuttle, meat wagon or foot trekkers-to relish on the fly.
Franz's one weak suit, his true
blind spot-he had no knack
or facility
for drawing, so Winfred filled this one gap
in his repertory of talents.
Their partnership
thrived: a top publisher of fine arts books
in Amsterdam teamed them up
to co-author
a first book of Bonaire
