INTEGRITY

INTEGRITY

you are a voice
you proclaim it
to be so

standing before an
empty canvas

staring
      into space

I read the guide
it tells me
    the title of
this piece
    is, if I read
it right, “Whatever”

I would like to smirk
but fear aesthetes
might stone me

missed that semester course
on dead surrealism
                        was spending
much of that time
feeling and
          looking vacant

imagining a world where
there was no Spanish Civil War
ergo
      no International Brigade
      no Picasso Guernica

maybe the Universe sometimes
takes poetic license

could it be
        that we are all long-passed
and this is all a De Chirico,
Dali-esque forever recycled
state
      of dreaming?

who knows how to
          find the truth, get
to the bottom
    of this matter

what is it with truth
                              anyway?
always looks
            feels        so suspect

as is the case with all these
either-or binaries

          damned if you do
            damned if you don’t

see you added your own little
postscript to that non-painting
destroying
      its artistic integrity

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