If only beauty were enough,
if desire were currency,
I could sweat the toil of my trade,
and trade the products of longing for a life.
A lifetime of time and being would be born
complete and viable,
projected, crimson, onto walls
Inside The White Cube of reason;
begetting little cubes.
Viscera would be cordoned-off and labeled
in Times New Roman,
while unflinching Prudence
pushes pins in,
centers, justifies, edges, frames,
binds blind organisms, birthed--conceived,
in fervid dreams,
with Philosophy's cool surname,
and hands
dollars over fists
to clench it,
make it alright,
set it aright
with right angles.
I would spend every night
and waking day
making this kind of life.
I’d never paint a Crucifixion without tears rolling,
as in Fra Angelico’s face
of Christ, inviolate, radiant with restraint,
deep in his science.
I’d never work without a prayer to make
cadmium drip from my eyes
onto skins, titanium;
bones beneath them, white;
transparent tissues scumbled over yellow fats;
blood vessels threaded like roots,
blue through the zinc,
and umber hairs that shoot
from delicate membranes,
laced with lead,
and places where the white turns red
with feeling
(parasympathetic response),
always just turning red
(rose madder lake),
in perpetuity.
It would be enough for me.
And for beauty alone,
I would live until it was time to die;
fake blood,
love, work,
and never worry
about such moot questions as
‘where are my children?’
Where, my Spouse?’