“Culture is a Wonderful Thing That We All Share” © John Engstrom

 

A Spitball At N. M.

Artists, we are told,
Have demons.

I don’t see much
That is demonic
About a Sargent—
Other than
The socio-economic reality
In which it wuz made.

In Andrew Wyeth,
The demon is
A boring literalness.

The demon confronting Vermeer
When he made
‘Girl With A Pearl Earring’ wuz
The stomach-churning possibility
That his images would become
As insipidly ubiquitous
As the smile button or, worse,
‘Iconic.’

But if the Surrealist canvases
Of Arshile Gorky
Are an indication,
In some cases
An artist’s
Demons and vision
Are one.

So he went from being
A chronicler of the subconscious
To a victim of its darkness.
Too much awareness
Can kill you,
Gorky simply cheated Death.

The subconscious
Can empower us
To peer past
The limitations of our consciousness.
This is why dreams are
Useful and important.

Demons dance a dithyramb
On Death’s midnight island of
Cypresses and specters.

 

John Engstrom is a Boston-based artist-author-poet. A retired journalist-museum worker, he serves as Arts critic for the Fenway News. His collages and poems appear on Facebook and Divergents Magazine.