Acts III (Art)

(wherein the wet wall of myriad vaginas
occupies an enormous doorless room's far end
like low hanging fruit)

The first true love

of H.R. Giger's life

put a gun in her mouth

and blew her brains out

on the bed they once shared

but before she died

she took the time

to scrawl one final word on the floor:

Adieu.

Perhaps it was his art

that drove her mad

it's hard to know

but you don't need a P.H.D.

in perinatal psychology

to see the phallic significance of the act

all you have to do

is look at the fucking paintings

Beltracchi bilked the art world for millions

by telling them what they wanted to hear

what they needed to hear

but he knew what art was really for

by showing us these things

in that way the master forger

became the greatest artist of them all

by splashing his realizations

on the tabula rosa

of art itself.

True art subverts itself

that is its purpose

Giger claimed it was his art

that helped distance him from her death

that it helped him heal

perhaps that is its purpose too:

to heal the wounds

that it creates

but true art,

like the tail of the Uroboros,

consumes itself

just as it consumes us all.

For too long now

I have pondered

the purpose and meaning of art

for too long now

I have tried in vain

to escape its grasp

but that is what it does to us

it draws us to our doom

that is what art is

it is the preponderance of itself

it is both the of itself

and the not of itself

all at once

it is the horror of the spider's march

as we look into its eyes.

It is twelve aborted fetuses

in the chamber of a gun

fired at the heart of the sun

screaming all the way down

or a jet black New African xenomorph

wearing a necklace of human teeth

espousing burial rites

transcribed from the Tibetan

Book Of The Dead

in raspy tones.

It is like giving birth on your knees

to a litter of dead kittens

with your mouth

pausing only to wipe your face

with the back of one stale, shaking hand

pale as bone

or a world of perfect iambs no one reads.

Whenever I think of art these days

now that Giger is gone

I see stars and conflagrations

I see wind swept milky ways

wide, cold, old

like the Library of Alexandria

or the bones

of some long dead inquisitioner

whose sins

even pain can not pardon

or the long and plaintive moan

of earth's last dinosaur.

I see the end of all things

and I see the beginning of all things

in thick, wet ink

scrawled on the back

of a forgotten receipt

or the scalding, blinding black

of all first things

like paint gunning eyeballs shut

or the vicious splash of blood

so red it won't come out

can't come out

sprayed on the sheets that these two lovers shared

before art came knocking

gun cocked

behind its back

and loaded with twelve broken embryos

one for each month of the year

like seeing