About This Work

late last night i walked alone along the desolate shore of Monet’s pond at Giverny the pale moon sometimes obscured by impasto clouds the waterlilies those treacherous waterlilies screaming in agony Saskia, Rembrandt’s wife, was there naked and weeping, her hair and body wet and slimy draped in orange pond algae Cezanne crouched nearby cursing and slashing canvases with a butcher’s knife before tossing them into a fire when he finished he made fierce love to Saskia who sang an old Dutch love song as he did Rembrandt was in deep conversation with Monet in a puddle of passing moonlight and didn’t seemed to mind, anything to stop her endless wailing I heard him say Monet says Titian’s mistress is now a mermaid who lives beneath my betraying waterlilies which is why they cry and why I keep painting them no one makes love like her just look at Titian’s Madonnas Van Gogh stumbles in from a dung-filled alley, bleeding badly from the bullet wound in his abdomen, where the rich kids from Auvers tormented and shot him just for the fun of it, Vermeer bankrupt and gaunt steps from behind a tree and asks if it’s suicide or the new art Vincent says let the people believe that tragic ending it’s a dramatic final brushstroke to my life even if untrue but I love the blackbirds and my wheat fields and blue irises way too much to spill my guts on them cadmium red maybe my left ear lobe maybe but never my guts where’s de Kooning anyhow he yells the ******* borrowed my paintbrush and never returned it now I’ll have to paint with the tongue of Gauguin’s old shoe Caravaggio floats by face up caressed by the wet palms of the weeping lilies he’s burning up with fever delirious screaming where’s my ship where’s my ship they’re all on the ship my paintings my paintings will redeem me the Pope knows I only killed one man Monet strokes his beard like Moses Rembrandt says it happens to all of us even our wives and mistresses perhaps it’s the lead in our ***** it’s not suicide it’s not homicide it’s the madness of living too much Rothko appears, a translucent ghost inside a mist salving his slashed wrist with Monet’s pond water Mark washing washing the healing water the Giverny water dancing with pran the giver of life that’s what Monet was painting at the end using the palette from the other side pran transmitted through the wailing of the waterlilies the siren’s song that lures artists to their death and then washes them clean for the next go to pick up where they left off, alone with his whiskey bottle Jackson ******* hurls paint clots at Rembrandt’s Still Life with Peacocks those two dead peacocks they’re all dead peacocks floating belly up under Monet’s footbridge all the color gone from their plumage drink the water Jackson or better yet let Cezanne rip out your diseased liver and wrap it carefully in a weeping waterlily and float it out into the middle of the pond where the forgiving moonlight and the mermaids and Monet’s eyes now dim with cataracts can help it filter out the poison of living too much and then you too Jackson will make painterly love to Saskia and she will daub your diseased body in Titian’s blue and her husband’s gold and Vincent’s sunflower yellows and send you back into the world where you will continue to splash us all as we lie flat on the ground hands and legs intertwined our faces and bodies your canvas more willing than ever Jackson, you’ll turn us into a unified field of smashed hues not just from here but from where you stand one foot on the other side get us all raging drunk Jackson in that myth you longed for splatter us in the tinted mess of the mystery you raged at and had to settle for drunken oblivion instead drink deeply the mystic-hued water of Giverny Vincent and Paul and Mark and Jackson and when you come back spit it out on our parched souls