Print

Mark Rothko's fine bright colors on my wall. Blurring between colors, frayed, wavering

rawness in spite of the print's quiet brightness. I wanted something to both remind me of

you as well as hacking you from my life. I stood outside Chicago's Art Institute,

assuming you meet me to share the Rothko's. You never appeared and I hadn't the heart

to stand before his work without you. Alone, its solitude merges with loneliness

Betrayal: too pretentious a word. Makes me want to retch, sickness sprayed across the

steps of the Institute. Depressed, I wanted violence: claw apart with bare, workingman's

hands and fingers, the Institute's lion sculptures, their superiority suggests you. We

 

cleaved (clung together) for months, years, eons. Who the shit cares for time these days.

 

We're either filled to our edges with it or harrowed with sharp equipment to break apart

 

the earth. Either way it means pain. I bring to you a meat cleaver, one to sever with broad

 

blade our bonds, though past. A warrior cleaves through enemy territory, laying low the

 

mass they command and master another's hold on history. The only blood: blues,

 

oranges, yellows, blacks, and greens of his canvasses. He razor-slashed his arms until

 

blood pooled at his corpse, an accomplishment for creators and visionaries---what you

 

and I aren't. I phoned you and asked why the no-show. Cat's up the tree and won't come

 

down, you said. Time for the split. Mark's work grand, tragic. Our lives together simply

 

wasted. Out damn narcissism, it makes puny loom grandiose.

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