John Hertzberg.
Reminders.1992.
Mixed Media Collage, 30" x 40". $1100.

Floating above memory's words
And fading marks of time and place
General Custer surveys the scene
Trying to connect words and mysteries
Gathering force
But held at bay
By the black icons of time
Like the Stars and Stripes
Folded pyramid style
And presented to those left behind
Watching Time's Maginot Line
Disappearing behind neatly stacked numbers
Measuring nothing
Perhaps a foil for shadows and spheres
Hovering quite near
Fair Juliet and words of chance
Laying foundations resting on dreams
The Egyptian Princess smiling
At the scene unfolding
Behind the looking glass of time
Adam and Eve thinly clad
Cast out and on the run
As coiled around the forbidden fruit
The serpent speculates about Truth
And the Dow Jones Averages never learn
Just why the common ground seems askew
With buttons to push
And islands floating in the sun
Dark passages frozen
Held in check by opposing forces
While Mona Lisa left her smile behind
Fastened to a billboard
Lost in time
As flags flutter in the breeze
Twenty-one gun salutes echoing
In the recesses of wordman's mind
Reminders of that which never was