Painters Painting

Everything is to human scale

and you and I are all choreographers of space,

an eerily ambivalent void.

And yes, we worked in various ways,

destroyed various things,

all while you had to have times to feel sorry for yourself.

And no, this has nothing to do with how a picture hits you:

I haven’t done anything in three years

but make things difficult for the critics

and give polite invitations to look somewhere else

besides my portrait of being alive.

Every square inch was equally important

and you used to make sure to leave no trails

but then we erased until we made art

and you’re not here anymore

than how the patterns traveled into the horizon.

I pay heavy money for the art of cheap newspapers,

apprehensive, confrontational with every image.

If I frame my memories of you with my fingers and squint,

I can see how things pushed one another in a pseudo-space

and how there was never a beginning,

just marks scratched into the paper while neither of us looked

until there was a final product that belonged to not you and not me

and we became bystanders in our own relationship.

Secretly I can admit that no one can figure out what I’m doing

but all this time, I’ve just been a work of art

reacting to some other art across the ocean

and it’s not a coincidence that you’re a seven hour plane ride away from me.  

The words and phrases cobbled together to form this found poem are credited to the artists interviewed in the documentary “Painters Painting”, directed by Emile de Antonio.