Dear Dalí
You inspire me to move, to be the ultimate art piece. Your work seems immortal as it goes beyond the visible space and into consciousness. It takes me to places that I never knew existed, outside the reality of vision and understanding.
You put me in a landscape where I can fly up to a palace and look from above at myself somewhere else. I exist, I create, and I remain in both places. Nothing is static. Everything moves with my thoughts, which reveal that what I know is nothing more than change and shape.
Am I the only heart beating here? I see others and creatures, but I do not touch. I believe them to be what I think that they are. At the moment I believe something to be holy and out of reach, after deep thought, I realize that I am sitting on the ledge of heaven and creating hell all around, but it is not a place I choose to leave. It is a place that I explore and am invisible. I am the all see-er. I am the invincible rebel in a land of doom and divinity. All things remain in between as I cannot unlearn what I already understand.
You give me a symbol that symbol that whatever I create represents all understanding. Even though I cannot definitively explain what I understand, I can create where it fits and recognize the line where it lives.
To me, you are alive and well. It is you. It is you because I do not force it to be. You naturally spring into the role, the protagonist in your own divine relationship with hell. You express what you are able to articulate, which turns reality into something you make, not something made for you to fit into. I see that all of this is possible and you do too. It is a humanhood bonding beyond vision. Together we are in heaven creating hell and not afraid to see the light in the demons, which circulate this majestic palace.
Thank you for being this and seeing this and showing yourself to me. If I could choose a father, it would be you because you would not be afraid to take me into the darkest place and show me that it is here that I must remain and learn to see its holiness, alone.
Hico Auwa
Staged Life
Precise,
economic circus ride.
Blame me for this rigid framed life
precision, economic structured circus living.
I was born into mainstream society.
You know, the one where money separates you from everything you need.
Humanity naturally thinks that morality is a corporate responsibility,
and as we move further from birth and closer to death at some point we reach maturity.
That’s when you have a job and
can afford to get all the things you’re taught to need.
Ring, ring, 7:30 alarm goes off to start the day.
Don’t play, don’t run away,
just stand in line, clock in and don’t be late.
But, “you were born to be great…some day, not today, that’s what the future holds,”
my parents used to say.
Well if I was, then they were and you were,
but America needs a middle class because that’s how economics operates.
So stop drawing and put your pen away, and start applying for some jobs.
Steadily pushed since birth from my bursts and natural thirsts into lecture halls
where I’m told what I like and love are just hobbies meant for free time–if I have any at all.
Brain waves interpret the wake state just as a circus monkey needs to be trained, tamed to entertain.
Only entertainers need to be great.
Young man sit up in your seat straight.
Rules castrate, control the animals that populate.
No hands, only machines precise, prevent, create.
It’s magic the life the hope tv portrays–clowns, ballet dancers,
jesters, acrobats and royalty, popcorn man,
lion tamers, bright lights, facades and VIP.
Yet, real life creates some rainy days–maintenance, transportation, cages, trash and security,
mockery, workers, lines judgements and impunity.
Economics needs this dichotomy.
It takes workers and rent to open a circus tent.
I bought my tickets ma’am can I go in?
“Come back in about an hour. The previous show has yet to stop.
In fact, why don’t you and your friends spend some money in the gift shop.”
Why?
Because it’s a framed life, precise, economic circus ride.
Freedumb
Life, what a joke.
A laugh so hard that it could only be a comedy–
bombs, haves and have nots, humans crawling on top of humanity
to rule everyone below and laugh defying gravity.
That’s the goal of life after all, right?
To be on top,
to reach the pinnacle,
to become so successful that you epitomize it all
to be satisfied
to be liked
to be fully entertained
to be able to be so much it’s hard to explain.
You want it all?
Yes, everything from everyone else.
Eyes glaring, staring, capturing every move.
You see that?
That’s success.
That right there in your sleep in your thoughts in your allness
in that big fat feeling of greatness
after you’ve been inspired to take on the world,
pooof!
Blow it out of your palm.
Can you handle the man that creeps up behind you in silence?
He gets so close that you can feel his breath.
Then he lets out the biggest laugh, Ha..Ha..haha.
That makes your heart skip and jump,
and you jump too.
This laugh was fast, deep from the belly of this hideous fool.
You can’t stand the laughter handle the startling shock after,
but you know you want to prevent it from ever happening again.
You must be present in the crowd at the circus.
Dreaming of becoming the maestro of the show, and you didn’t know
the whole thing’s as flimsy as a blade of grass.
Don’t want to cry so you laugh.
You look around and see everyone is laughing.
You bought the ticket in high hopes of being fully realized
while stuffing your face and loving how it tastes.
“Amusement here,” he whispers and leans closer.
“Amusement here,” he whispers again and laughs standing tall above the crowd, looking down at everyone.
Psychedelic Rocker
What if you were a psychedelic rocker who performed in front of a screen projecting oversized lava lamp drips? Your guitar connected to some electrical device waits to be picked. You stand there tapping your feet.
Thousands are in front of your eyes, below the horizon. The drummer behind you hits the rim of the snare drum on a 2/4 count, and you start to pluck strings singly, each tone connected with the next.
As the sounds start to fill and your head bobs with the snare kick, you feel your guitar neck. Your fingers crawl all over it. High tones, low tones, and then she starts to sing.
Standing next to you she plucks a string on the bass guitar. The sound of each note is so deep that it rattles your rib cage. Inside your head James Brown is saying, “Hey!”
He’s stomping his feet and starting to groove. You see it. You feel it. You start to be Brown. All of those people start to bob back and fourth, and she sings again–some harmony along with the sticky snare kick.
You extend her soft voice with your G string and tickle the note long and hard. There you are, the psychedelic rocker.
Mourning Interaction
“How’d you sleep?”
“Fine,” I said. Then I mumbled,
“I wouldn’t tell you otherwise.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I just thought cuz you were up early that you may have slept kinda rough.”
“Nah, I usually wake up around 5 and roll around,” I said.
Then, I continued without taking a breath.
“This time I just decide to get up. I wish you weren’t here, or rather me, that way I wouldn’t have to answer such trivial questions, and I could go about my morning silently, speaking to myself in my head and not be interrupted for the sake of breaking silence.”
He didn’t even acknowledge my answer. He didn’t even listen for it. The water jug sat open under the running faucet, and on the counter top my mothers coffee cup sat, which still needed to be filled and stirred. His face peering into the crisper drawer focused on the sliced peppers and ham he needed to start my mother’s lunch. The door shut. The cup filled.
“Glad to hear you slept good.”
He threw the spoon into the sink and rushed off with my mother’s coffee in his hand.
Once I stopped questioning who or what created me, I became the creator.
I can’t take life serious. So I paint.
Life means that I am conscious in the 21 century.
That’s a term used to canonize existence of human knowledge progressed from year zero.
Actually, human knowledge claims to go beyond year zero. Why have zero if it means nothing? Why have human knowledge?
We are so low to the ground it feels cold.
If we should rise from this planet earth home,
does the coldness fade to heat waves up high?
One with nothing, knows nothing.
“Hello nothing,” she said. It’s about time we met.
After the missionaries, the capitalists arrived.