Promises Foretold

I want to find the scars you hide
The ones on your body,
The ones inside.

Embrace me for a day or two
Whisper love in your ears
Hold my hand tightly
And I'll fight your fears.

I am mistaken for a man of words
My actions are mostly mum
Patience my loveliest
Your lover shall come.

White Floor

My house is tired of my being
My everyday rants, broken lines of ants
And I lie on the white of the marble
Scattered everywhere, everyday
Licking it bereft of dust, of color
Thinking of it as your white bare body.
My tongue drags on and on
Splintered with lies, both black and white
Leaving behind the trail of red
On a passage of pure white,
And like an artist possessed by love
I paint the floor pure red, the red of my
Heart, the red from your body, into
The white sands of my house.

A Study In The Life Of An Artist: Critical Perspectives From Marginalized Voices

There exists almost no distinction between critical postmodern art and the emergence of the neo-proletariat ideals that have begun to (re)populate the world in small measures. Both work on the singular premise of dismantling existing structures of form and power by subtle rearrangements in societal plateaus. For instance, we can observe non-linear ideological shifts in the way the West is engaging itself with the rest of the global community compared to the half a century back when capitalism as a tool of coercion had gained incredible universal momentum. Art and resistance evolve in similar ways, and share a common ground when to comes to (de) idealogizing the present. That is what art truly represents, resistance/persistence, and the Artist becomes the first and final martyr in the entire process. The Artist which indulges in postmodern art also willingly/unwillingly engages with the war of the neo-proletariat. Power is what the Artist despises and what he ironically comes to use when the dismantling of structures begins. Unlike a mythical context of literature or art, the Artist employs present day tools to create an alternate universe of possibilities, which in turn aims to depopulate the present world of stagnant ideas. This circle of reluctant but inevitable martyrdom repeats itself universally in both time and space. What is interesting to note is the demystifying effect of critical postmodern art on present day power mongers. I do not argue about the absolute possibility of artistic utopia but rather the changing nature of the Artist in today's time and age. An artist whose work I'm intimately familiar with argues that it is not possible to reconcile the difference between a falsified grandiose history and present day post critical nuances of art. A painting cannot be traditional when it comes to form and progressive when it comes to the object simultaneously, it must choose either of the two. Cubism and Dadaism were two such defined centers of artistic gravity, both existed only to inspire and recreate the circular representation of artistic utopia. But neither one of them 'began' with such specific goals, like most movements captured in homogenized nomenclature, these two were also results of pedantic and pedagogic classifications.

fig. 1. Roger Brown. Talk Show Addicts, 1993. Etching and aquatint, 22 1/4 x 29 ¾ in.

(Courtesy of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago)

In the above picture, 'Talk Show Addicts' by Roger Brown, there is a frightening yet prophetic view of urban degeneration via the medium of television. Proximity among neighbors is only possible through a medium controlled by a select few. The dystopia of the Artist is the utopia of the Capitalist. The Artist of today's age has been entrusted with the humongous task of (re) creating 'Art' in a controlled environment of 'mass media', herein lies the ultimate contradiction, for the medium is both the 'enemy' and the 'tool'. This negotiation of being mesmerized and being disillusioned comes at a mental toll for the Artist whose purpose is validated by the very presence of what it seeks to 'destroy'. The products of coercive ideologies such as capitalism are puppets in response to an artistic vision that seeks universal fulfillment. The Marxist philosophy of socialist possibilities is mere lip service to any individual who seeks institutionalized anarchy, another contradiction that the Artist must deal with in order to create parallel self flagellating universes. 

Blacker Than The Night

When I stand naked facing the mirror
I can almost make out my black heart
Looming behind pale skin, twinning an
Omen; ridiculously frightened of itself.

My heart, never really mine, cajoles me,
To love someone.

An ink-pot of soot filled liquified carbon,
My heart, is incapable, of love. Caged by
A pair of tired ribs, it rests, hoping to be
Sterilized by disease and despair. My
Beautiful black heart resembles a gutter.

The blood in my veins runs amok in my
Body, mimicking an ignorant third world
Dictator, whose wives equal his soldiers.
I am the dictator and I am the oppressed.

I have the blackest and the darkest heart,
Which, when the day comes to an end,
Cajoles me, to love someone.

Geometrical Lives

My life led beside your geometry
of soft circles and bushy triangles.
Straight line arms ricocheting off
spherical mounds of your shoulders,
reaching out for the bare and gaunt
of my torso in passionate violent swirls.
And I begin my assault on the cleft of
your chin, inches away from a moment
of bare skin and hungry lips, orbiting in
space beyond their reach. 

Cuckold

I heard about an affair
last month. Yours with his
tangled up like
noodles in an upmarket
joint. Forgive me
for asking
but
are you fond of meatballs
as well?

Pardon my manners
for i am curious
about
the anal.o(r)gies
he sought.
Or daydreamed
considering
his noodle.

Broken Bits

Parts of you flounder but I've left
You nothing but visuals
Dream like hallucinations
Neither drug induced nor amorous
Only summoned by my memories.

Parts of me flounder too but not
For you.

Corals of white stretched in bigotry
Against the great white sharks of time
Indignant that the universe values them little.

I valued you more than my time, recklessly so.
Smoked second hand smoke
Sucked on breasts, conically and laterally
All the while thinking of you.

The time has come for you, customarily
So to be penetrated soon
By a penis
Reassuringly not mine.
 

Bits of Bitterness

There is a storm brewing outside
Much like coffee in my morning cup
I can smell wet earth when I write
Small letters and little fucks.

The world has opened up to me
A girl well groomed
Shadows have found meaning
And everyone else fooled.
 

Names, Spoken Aloud.

When you turn sixty, a year away
From sixty one. Say my name aloud.

Say my name with all the years of
Love, rolled up, tightly in a ball of
Burnt ash.

Say my name with rage and want
Mixed together.

And gushing like blood in purple
Lid veins, my memory will arrive.
Twenty one was your age when
I deserted you. Or twenty two.

Clench those wrinkled two fists
Scarred by abandonment and age.
And ask yourself.

Your memory will not serve you
And you will sob in silence.
Your bleeding heart will whisper
Forty years I have loved you
Another forty I will.

When you turned twenty two
I said your name aloud.

Hollow's End

Almost a lie, that love of ours,
Deprecating mass of emotion.
Who would've thought, who
Would've decreed, love sets
Your ruin in motion.

I remember your toes, curled
Up like whiskers down there.
Furious seeing them naked.

I am vacant with your love, it
Tears me up, carves me hollow.
The disease you gave me
Farewell present, omnipresent.
Don't follow me to my end.

Bile at the corner of my mouth,
Foaming, moaning, dying to be
Free.

Will replace my heart in x days
The last one belonged to you, why
Shed a lonely tear, your sentiments
Callous few.