Jersey thoughts at the Sistine Chapel, Rome....

I would like to get Michelangelo to paint my house.

I would enjoy seeing him in those baggy white painter’s pants,

white cap with the elongated brim,

work boots with their laces untied,

oversized tongue flapping as he walked.

I think he’d enjoy it.

Sort of comic relief from laying on his back

painting for the Pope.

At least he would get to spend the day standing.

I wonder what he will think of rollers

rather than his fine paintbrushes and rags.

I can see him now, painting little Red Devils

with pitchforks and long pointed tails

each with Pope Julius’ face,

at places you would not expect to find them.

How will I protect against the hordes who would travel

just to find “Waldo” where he sketched them

in the niches of my home.

I could print tour directories

numbering the locations:

under the rain spout drainpipe

inside the garage between the two overhead doors

in back of the TV where the cable meets the wall

above my cat’s litter box

near the hole in the baseboard that the mouse uses,

next to a painted miniature Swiss Guard,

to scare the cat away,

in back of the headboard where I sleep, but not near my wife,

by the bookstand where my family bible is located

finally flat-square-dead-center of my son’s bedroom door.

I can see it now,

pick up the toilet lid.

There staring at you from under the top an angelic cherub.

Daring you to unzip.

I’d come home from work at the office at noon each day

sit with him under the oak tree on the front lawn.

He would have one of those black metallic lunch pails.

Inside, a piece of fine provolone, a hunk of Italian bread

and a bottle of red wine from Umbria.

Yes, I’d have a lot of fun,

if I could get Michelangelo to paint my house.

                                  ...Michelangelo Paint My House by Ray Brown, Frenchtown


Ray also wrote How to Eat a Cannoli and A Leprechaun by the Roadside and other poems of Irish, Catholic, New Jersey, Italian, and general interest and features them on his website.  (He even apologizes for doubting Al Gore.)  Ray's poetry is wry and imaginative and is clearly drawn from the roots many of us here have creeping underground and winding together.  He is of Frenchtown and Keyport, perhaps two of the most disparate small towns in New Jersey with totally different zeitgests and demographics, yet he finds the links.
Eat a cannoli (ganole?) with Ray today.  Maybe you can watch Michelangelo paint the cast of Jersey Shore and the "broadcasting" team of NJ 101.5 flambe'.
Thanks to poet and New Jersey social and tranist commentator Anthony Buccino for this link.

Keep writing,

Maureen