Vicious Beauty
Nico Mara-McKay is a writer living in Toronto. Her poetry has been published in or is forthcoming in The Red River Review, EdgePiece, Line Zero, Northwind, and Contemporary Verse 2, among others journals. She can be found online at http://nicomaramckay.com.
Even where none of the parts
Of a good whole are bad
Or a bad whole good
Sid was in
a bad state
when he landed
It often happens that
The value of a complex whole
Cannot be measured
the only places
Sid could find peace:
celebrity haunts
By adding together
The value of its parts
The whole is often better
but then he
would often incite
trouble himself
Or worse than
The sum of the value
Of its parts
(life with Sid
and Nancy
was terrible)
In all aesthetic pleasures
It is important that the object admired
Should really be beautiful
he was desperate
to live up to
his name
as he felt fame
——–slip
—————–ping
——–from
—————————-his
————————————–grasp
In the admiration of what is ugly
There is something ridiculous
Even sometimes repulsive
a meeting was arranged
on the condition that
Nancy did not attend
Although apart from the object
There may be no difference
In the value of the emotion
Sid turned up very late
with Nancy
nevertheless in tow
SOURCE: Bertrand Russell, from “The Elements of Ethics” in Philosophical Essays interspersed with fragments from Malcolm Butt’s Sid Vicious: Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.
[...] poem “Vicious Beauty” has been published in the Fall 2011 edition of The Found Poetry Review. It juxtaposes an [...]