Guernica /Pablo Picasso
Everything is broken, Herr Von Richtofen.
That is your “great success.”
Our hands express to air their dire implications
without enmity, sorrow, or regret,
but wildly, as if they had been drawn in black and gray
upward into the air, that is the source of their suffering,
Where the faces of our enemies remain invisible,
while forcing the issue of our dependency
on this little market packed with commodities
and our minor, civilized aspirations and beliefs.
Where woman, man and animal
scream into negative space
and each figure is propped
against each fading line’s indifference
Turning nothing into ragged figures
that grip a broken sword, or fly apart haplessly,
under the still-burning bulb that lights the ceiling,
and these beautiful deaths you can know nothing of.
