Antidote

“Your art is the antidote to someone else’s pain.”[1]

But how can that be so
When it’s all I can do to strain
Dull words through the filters in my mind
Hoping to find
A few that fit?

They only fit me, though
And never really well enough
Just poorly glued labels
That peel off my thoughts
And litter the page with pretentious banalities

But then I wonder

Did Dylan Thomas feel like a fraud
When he named the night sky “Bible black”
And my heart forgot how to beat?
Maybe he did.

Or, Walt Whitman, when he declaimed in his glory
“I am large.  I contain multitudes”?
And I knew at that moment
I was large.  I contained multitudes
That could sound through my barbaric yawp

And then there were times, when . . .

Leonora Carrington painted my dreams on a newly primed canvas

When Bach and Bauhaus collaborated on my soundtrack, with John-Lee Hooker and Florence Welch providing the vocals

When Harold Pinter wrote what runs daily through my head into a play, before I was even born

When Ken Russell directed the film version, and pulled in Pina Bausch for the dance scenes

And when someone else’s art
Is the antidote to my pain,
Surely it would be too selfish
To not try to pay that back

 

May 2025


[1] Aimee McNee

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