painting
i should take up painting
why not?
i have a wooden box
full of oils and acrylics and watercolors
that i’m only using
as a stand for my dvd player
i have canvases of all sizes
nearly a dozen
that are stacked in a closet
and still wrapped in the
manufacturers cellophane
my brushes sit in an old
jack kerouac coffee mug
atop a bookshelf collecting dust
so maybe i should take up painting
after all, all the other greats did
henry miller eventually made it his life
yes, all of the other great ones did
something else
even if it wasn’t painting
william carlos williams was a doctor
and walt whitman served in the civil war
as a nurse
but i can’t stand the sight of blood
not even my own
yet i still feel like i should do something else
you know
to complement the writing
or in case the word gets old
watching espn and collecting baseball cards
just isn’t enough
i need something significant
i need something subtle but great
another art to try and master
another wild whore to tame
another muse to have a tallboy with
some more suffering to heap on my soul
i really think i should take up painting
because i just can’t get enough of my own
immortality these days
and besides no one talks about picasso in the bars
anymore
it’s just jean-michel basquiat all the time now.
plus, frank o'hara was a curator. Great poem.
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