the artist

and when the artist soared into the void

defying gravity

gesticulating arms

signing the sky

airborne lunar traveler

head first out of a Paris garret,

a camera captured

this yodan judo master Zen conceptualist

landing in the puddled street below,

and hours later,

“Man Flies”

made Le Monde’s Sunday morning headlines.

and when Rotraut suggested a weekend in Nice,

the artist tied canvases to their Citroën roof

“to reach the far side of the infinite”, he explained,

birthing several anthropometries

speeding along at 70 miles an hour,

primary colors and factory soot layer upon layer

splattered and variegated in the morning rain,

becoming environmental outré performances- Mondo Cane gorilla theatre.

and when the artist performed the tracing of fire

launching flames to harness life’s ultimate creative force,

with flamethrower in hands and

Parisian firefighters poised,

his torch liquefied pigments on canvas,

migrating the ultramarine colors

as the bubbling oils textualized,

and dressed in beret and tuxedo,

this Prometheus spawned life,

this prankster who laughed at the infinite, the undefinable, the absolute:

once and for all, singlehandedly,

lampooning all remaining precepts of art.