Sadness Is A Blessing Poem by Louie Vizcarra

Round two, two years later
its been a long time coming.
I climb up in the driver's seat, pull the choke
push the clutch, turn the key, pump the gas
and fire up the old engine that's been lying dormant.
Clean off the dust, the rust, the cobwebs.
On a straightaway
stretch out all the gears, top gear, top end.
It's the familiar overwhelming burning
the purple juice inside my bones
brought back to life.
Pressure building up until it starts to seep through
the pores on my skin.

I take the brush, dip in deep into blue,
into green,
into brown, brown skin made more brown
in New Mexico.
I trace it slowly across the canvas
painting my soul
all these colors separated, yet together
but only for a second
because suddenly I'm swinging wildly,
hurling paint at the canvas, splattering colors, and
long ribbons of paint splash up against virgin canvas.
Dalí has possessed me, and all my subconscious
dreams and fears and longings
manifest themselves in the painting as savage animals
viciously tearing at one another, flesh and blood
flying through the air.
Audibly, visibly, the canvas bears witness to
genocide and homicide and infanticide
screaming pain and a sudden pause
when all at once everything stops, and images fade,
lines lose contour, colors mix, then slowly unspiral
like a kaleidoscope, then take shape into
pretty green exotic trees, pretty yellow lights,
nicely tanned, on crutches, shaking hands
meeting for the first time, speaking in Spanish.
Light puffy clouds, shaped like lips,
drape across a blue backdropp of a curved, brown neck.
All of these opposing images
gracefully fall from my paintbrush onto the pale, naked canvas
simultaneously.

Life lived in fluid, seamless motion is a tricky scene
to put onto canvas.
We are títeres, not controlled by
but colored like Geppetto.
This painting, like the painter
is a scene of insurrection:
Over dead bodies
in Spanish, the títeres sing a song:

Sadness isn't my blessing, sadness is my curse
I thought I could do much better
Instead I did much worse.
Too stupid, too late
too wicked, too fake
it's the end of a line-
A line drawn fine.
Go back to your Texas,
I'll go back to my
rotten log I sit on alone in the woods.

The purple juice is barely out
The pendulum affect of a 2 year drought.