Dead Art

I never chose this dead art,

never wanted to perch atop tombstones 

scrawling erratically with my hands becoming fossils,

scribbling haphazardly on any tabula rasa.

I didn't ask for this 

aversion to vacuity

I didn't ask for this internal voice demanding

that I battle makeshift monsters,

I am tilting at windmills

I am challenging thunder.

I have no blade, I clinch my pen
raise it as a shield in my defense

  

No answer is forthcoming

I can will no words to appear

What obstacle blocks their formation?

my palms have been pierced  

I saw fractures form from the conception

red revealed slowly from the split

wet whispers of mortality
rivulets down my wrists

I have maimed only myself

in melee against imagined beasts.

Nothing can fully capture the human heart

there is always some element lost,

when a performance is recorded,

when a painting becomes a print.

There is a hollowness where 

something just can't be expressed

no medium can

convey the condition.

I am eating my paints

I am drinking the thinner

I have pthalo blue on my tongue

and lemon yellow on my fingers