Random Broken Things

The room is designed to make you uncomfortable.
A museum piece. Random broken things.

parts

of buildings suspended, unsure, dangling from the
ceiling. Gurneys without pads. Wireframes
with wobbly wheels. Pillars
on the floor. The top pf a toilet or two.
the eye does not know where to rest.
Nothing about it comfortable and yet

It is familiar. That sense of something missing.
Something menacing. Something,
and this is the worst of it, incomplete.
A beautiful thing or two missing,
Sometimes even the heart of it all.

But you go on. This is what you have learned
too well – it is amazing what you can live
without. Body parts. Things. Chuncks of your
heart. Comfort. Certainty.

And so the art installation, made to make you uncomfortable.
Doesn’t. It feels ordinary. LIke life. A thing of

Surprises that have lost their value.

About this poem

I have often lived life with parts missing. LIke the poem says, it is amazing what we can live without. And at times, well. At times not so well.

I tolerate uncertainty better now than I once did. That’s either age, or just having survived ore than my share.

Over the years, I have developed an affinity for deconstructed art. Poetry is never about one thing.

The picture was taken at Mass MoCA. (Mass. Museum of Contemporary Art).

Tom