What is an artist?

It’s a rare species they agree. Weird kind of humans they say.

They are even rumored to read written text backwards & paint from their assholes.
Apparently, they raise their eyebrows until their forehead merges with their skull, until their tongues are lolling & itching to pry their own eyes open. Their bodies decay faster they say, grow roots into the soil or into coarse gray marble. Sometimes their veins reach out from under their ribs & join the electrical wires of a radio!

Their reflections talk back to them sometimes & sometimes their breaths scorch the paper. Ink runs thick in their quills like blood. In cold winters, they sleep open eyed with their toes in their mouths. Inside their beating hearts is a cold, blue stone that would glisten like a king in the sun, but it hides among tumultuous gray veins that pump sugary molten blood.

Its said that they swallow rude winds & rigid forests. They steal firewood & burn hair in the night-lamp, while they swig bottled blue wine that sparkles in dank cellars. Their words are empty sometimes, their meanings true. As their tails stomp the earth, the dust risen climbs up rusted rails into gloomy golden skies sometimes.