george bellows rocketship

for my brother in rhyme, jonathan hayes

the drive down to LA was smooth sailing as we guided my brother's ford fiesta [god knows how we made it in that anti-rocket!] over The Grapevine that landed us into the city at dusk when the air was purplesoftlight & airplanes from LAX encircled us like bats leaving their cave 

the next day we explored the La Brea Tar Pits & then LACMA it couldn't have been a more pleasant sunny day maybe it was saturday or sunday or monday but the museum was filled with children & parents while outside at the cafe was the coolest looking dude i had ever seen up to that point he was dressed in black button down longsleeved shirt black jeans black doc martens boots close-cropped grey hair & bushy grey beard he was the very picture of what i thought a painter should look

inside i found the punishing boxing paintings of george bellows in all their wound-up sweat bruises & suffering of the pugilists as if it were a 8MM stag loop rendered in pulpy colors that had me think of the beauty & futility of living in a modern world 

& there were students at bellows' feet with large notebooks & pencils in hand copying his work for a school assignment

my brother & i caught between the brutal world of george bellows' boxing paintings & the MTV world that we knew which was beginning to learn their shape