
Out of silence, and lidded smolder,
arose a localized storm.
You could say
it was a balletic squall
forecasting its own tyrant reign
and fall, a fate designed
to galvanize and then blackout
not so gently into that goodnight
exit wreck.
Nature is as nature does,
right, Mr. Pollock?
In your rare case,
mercury dripped
from your stubby filaments
like quicksilver on the lam,
and you, part-man, part-wolf,
part-periodic-chart-of-elements,
spindling rogue science and alchemy
into a singular tempest,
you, Pollock, changed the course
of weather.
You disrupted the static quo
by flashing X-rays of a gutted dreamscape,
by showing us the prehistoric graffiti
on God’s bathroom stall.
Some people blanched, others blushed, some sneered,
still others reviled
the day you picked up a brush
and dared to anoint yourself a painter.
As if
art was their remedial eunuch and pet valet,
housebroken and trained
to cross the parlor
without disturbing their death-rites
or wrinkling the air.
The testicular jilt
and primacy of your form
did not fit their paradigm,
they hadn’t yet designed
the right bag in which to carry your balls.
Of course, what they lacked in vision,
they made up for in money and scissors,
and so it was only a matter of time before
snip and kaching.
Alchemy defies dimestore analysis,
and yet the riots you laid down, Pollock,
the freewheeling dervishes and calisthenics
captured on canvas and arrested in space,
continue to inspire freebase bop solos—
Form following dysfunction
of the world at large
off a cliff
running the ground up
to lightning rods within
igniting crack and boom
and the kaleidoscopic pop
of a cosmic aneurysm
BIGBANG
seeherenow
the manic hodgepodge of conjugal blips
seethereabove
nimbus mating with melted crayons,
and the whorling gist of Van Gogh’s skies
reimagined as atomic ruptures
seedownbelow
waggling freeform tentacles
of a giant mythical squid with a bloodlust
for pirates and ships
seeburningwithin
viscous hysteria, and vitreous strands of dreamstuff
as if bugleblown out of the Universe’s congested pope of a nose.
You danced your beautiful palsied dance
inside the paintings, Mr. Pollock,
you romanced dark clouds and silver linings
with your own glyphic sense of cherish,
and if nature is as nature does,
then I’d say that
soul-expansion and self-annihilation
ran hand in hand
in you
like vagrant playmates or prickly bedfellows,
the molecular rasp
of a perfect storm
beyond which all else
paled.