postmodernism examines modern art

we collect around splatters of color like worshippers in church, stare

silently up at the miles of paint, turn our heads this way and that, try

to make sense of it.

the last time anything made sense i was doing a handstand

in an empty bathtub during a 7.0 magnitude earthquake,

and i feel kind of like that now,

except the blood isn’t rushing so fast to my head.

i think it is, in a metaphorical sense. i think i am having a

sympathetic nervous response except my eyes aren’t dilating.

i think i am a member of this church now, praying to the god of art

that something in this painting will speak to me

like rembrandt never could.

the first time i died i saw these same splatters, except

they were all one shade of red and nothing about them was artistic.

afterwards, i was reborn as a middle class family’s dog, and then as a chicken in a cage,

and then as a potted aloe plant, and then as myself. I think this is the

least satisfying existence i’ve had thus far. i’m

still waiting for it to mean something.

everyone else has left now. it’s been at least two hours

and they’re starting to turn off the lights, closing the place down. i think

i must be invisible because the guards haven’t said anything to me.

or maybe that’s because i’m a fly now(that would explain the double vision and the wings

on my back). I just wish i could be who i was before. nothing’s better than being a person,

i think. when you’re a person you’re allowed to make mistakes.

i’ve been in the air too long, so when they finally turn the lights off & the guards

leave, i settle onto my favorite blue paint splatter and doze off, wondering where

jackson pollock is now. most of all i hope that when he died he thought his life

meant something. maybe now he’s a person again and his existence is not so sad after

all. maybe he’s a fly like me, or maybe he’s really gone forever.

i wouldn’t know. don’t come to me for answers. i’m only a bug.

in the morning the lights come on again and i fly to the next painting, hovering

far above it so nobody sees me. today i worship in a different church.

tonight i die a different death.