No Videography Allowed

Daumier’s feculent caricatures,
A glossy nightmare behind the glass,
Because the rows, the typed labels,
The industrial panes are what we require
To keep them from waking, speaking,
Compelling us to stay away from waterlilies
And Notre Dame in every painstaking blue.
The clay skulls stillbirths in his hands.
They ape gargoyles with mouths shaped
For rillettes and a favorite vintage, always red.
The slip was black and it made them discoveries,
Coproliths, the inverse of Easter Island.