“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.” – Pablo Picasso
From outside the portico of amusement
gilded archways & a monorail
vend a glad imprisonment
but for a studio lackey --
live acts & regulated rides
have dress rehearsal feel
it’s jazz with orchestrated notes
it’s hastily penned stories
from dissembling reporters.
He is of the outside-istas
the shinkankaku-ha
of an unsettled outer crust
self-consigned
to alternate containments
-- artist exiled to hallways
emptied of all but easel & paint
his favorite subjects strewn
in the arcade of the immediate
-- interpreter of little terrors inside
outside man in his outside
renders gates taller, wider
than for any prisoner of pleasure
whose scales his brushes weave
into the hide of pop epiphanies.
Inside go Yves Klein models,
paintbrush Anthropométries
naked, blue-flecked
visitors who paid handsomely
to be locked inside the walled city
thinking they could sidle untouched
by the bosom of spectacle.
In the bell jar of the commons
they take jubilant flight
over the Transcendental exhibit
& beyond the mysterious Ghanaian expo
as if it were possible
to frighten themselves
into being anywhere else
24 February 2012
Anaheim, CA