Art Does Art

Today you left a sketch all breathily

unfinished on your desk, and then came

back to find two wretched yellow pests

had interloped to fetch the creature you

had sketched diaphanously tall and regal

.

in the center of the paper, smushed it all

around, pulling it like taffy, spinning it like

pizza dough, misshapen and unbound:

wide enough to take the largest measure

of thick ghastly random pigments dripped

.

all over it like body fluids from you’d-rather-

not-know-what-or-whom, thickening into

black outlines sometimes – stain-glass-

windowing itself into ungraceful stasis –

awkwardly imprisoning now three main

.

featured creatures: unwitting prospects

rigidly awaiting sacrifice. “That wasn’t very

nice,” you said, but they were dead to you:

they’d long been taken to another artist’s

bed, retreated or advanced in yet another

.

artist’s trance without a thought. What has

who wrought? Can art do art? How does it

start? Reflex was to worry. But the worry

wasn’t strong. As long as something’s

making something, nothing’s wrong.

.