Prick of the Spindle: Poetry: Demaree: In the Painting

In the Painting
By Darren C. Demaree

Velvet-roped-off, framed, I find myself
protected in Picasso’s Don Quixote
as people milling through the halls
stare at me, naked under what they assume
is comfortable armor, loose sheet-metal
with an unsharpened lance.

I always wanted something bright
to the left of me, a tree maybe,
symbolizing Mother Earth;
I wanted something tangible.
Pablo wouldn’t hear of it. Sparse, he said,
you shall be sparse, the false hero has nothing
of rebirth to show the public.

They are not comfortable; I know this.
They see what Pablo saw in me,
my myth, the hollowness of my grandeur;
they see themselves. The thick and thin
of the brush strokes acknowledging
the over-powering of the rest
of the whiteness.
I dream of being
able to hang here, protected enough
to throw my armor at the next
person who walks by, brain them
good. Then stand there, naked,
my ass shown to Sancho.

I am the painting that is the story
that is the truth in all dreamers.
I am the safe one. Paint and canvas,
revered. Stagnant and moving.
Pablo never realized the rest
of my ambition, to be false forever.
To take my Dulcinea and run.

Darren C. Demaree is in Ohio. Currently, he misses all the kids in Alabama. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, both online and in print, and you can find him doing readings on the East Coast. No one from the West Coast has ever invited him to read.