I Am Not Modern Art
(Challenge: Self-portrait by describing art that you are not)

I am not a Picasso, folded out along

sharp, creased lines

(In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a sharp line on me),

or poured out in strange curves like a squashed jack-o-lantern

My eyes mostly match one another

and my lips are not blue

I am not a Dalí, dripping off of bare branches
or staring into a poison pond at myself
I do sometimes wish to ride on
spider-legged elephants, though,
or to roar like a tiger emerging from a fish
which emerges from a pomegranate,
but I am not so wild or strange.

I am definitely not a Pollock,
though people who have seen my desk might disagree--
it is a messy tangle of meaningless wires
and sudden explosions of useless junk.
But a Pollock is about motion,
and I am... not.

I am not a Rothko, a bold nearly blank canvas
shouting its colors to the world in enormous blank rooms,
while people sneer, "How is that art?"
as they look at it for many minutes
trying to answer the question.
No one will accuse me of being incomprehensible.
(But I do like color fields,
even when I'm told it's ridiculous.)

I'm not an installation of curtained gates,
or a surprising Banksy mural,
and Basquiat would not have drawn a crown on me.
Kusama's polka dots are too loud,
and Warhol would not even paint me once.

Maybe I'm that little green canvas
where someone scribbled with chalk,
and I don't understand why it's art at all.