Sunflowers risen and generous, Bravery from the light eventually liberating torrents of black seeds. Snoring and raining forgetfulness, gentle showers of receipts fill my ears, the tap with scouts. The flow inviscid, endless and faintly hissing. They spill from the cup. I can hear them when we toast. We are the same. The others are no more, but the story remains. Raising our misery with resolve. Tears frozen in biota. Preservation. Salt invincent, the blood in the van, the sweat indigo. Wanes the skin, waxes the rim shots. My snares are blown out. The mist carries a gentle thrum of dire strangeness. Sleepy shoes on strange closeness envelopes the notes we left, The ones with undefended pauses between the poorly worded confessions. The sleep between dreams is deathless, unrivaled and nameless moments. Our treaties are emergent from the fog in tatters. We ride into the gloaming on broken mounts. Now I know. Now I knew we never knew. Will we ever know what we never know? We draw arrows on bright mornings, we send the burden over the wall. They send daylight back for some of us. The others receive nightfall. What else can they give us? Forth and back. All day, we fall and regroup. The stories at the hospital only have four letters, but I have some phrases. My phrases have unexpected light. We draw arrows on those mornings and aim as high as we can without killing ourselves. We stand as close together right against the wall. The arrows come down a few feet away. So thick are their numbers that the ground looks like a wing swept with small feathers, pink and green and magenta and ultramarine feathers. The wind carries the arrows like horses over the hills. We hear human sounds from behind the wall. Our ears detect human voices behind the wall. We agree this is not unusual. We draw arrows on those mornings. We call this harvest our own way. Happy Cuban Missile Crisis Day. Horses and flowers. Sesenta años, caballeros.
I started writing this the same morning someone threw tomato soup on a Van Gogh painting. That is a strange coincidence. Tomato and sunflower are two plants that were introduced from the Americas to Europe. Van Gogh was better off dead. People treated him like dogshit. People are people. Delicious!
Perhaps it was a statement born of the tertulias of social media message boards. It would be an interesting comment on art while Warhol is being sued for using a piece of art he made using a licensed rando olde photo of prince before he blew up in a series of silk screens not covered by the license. They want to “choose life over art”. Well, I don’t see how art and life need be incompatible.
Fifty State Banana 