i bear the mark of speight

I Bear The Mark of Speight

Art is a black widow,
whether you're Vincent or yer just dabble.
Biting that enlightening apple
is a contract w/ a maggot of dark fate
- just ask Mark Speight, Mark Speight.

Art, art is death,
whether you're dilettante or Dylan Thomas,
'a name where maggots have their x' he promised.
All artists the same, too late to ditch glitter-stick
& the towel outtaya pram, Neil Buchanon!

Art is a total bummer,
whether you're Amadeus or amateur forever.
Tony Hart must have had a sin-eating, plasticine
mini-me, a self-claymation l/ scapegoat
sketch of Dorian Gray, to ace old age unscathed.

Art-lovers love the smell
of tetra-hydro-thiophen in the morning.
& if the 20th taught us anything,
it's that God never gets off His omnipresent ass
in time to turn off the gas.

So if poetry is the blood jet,
that makes me Plath's Tampax
- for heavier than heaven flow, red
inkjet from the wound-fount of Ariel, that dries
black as an inkjet in the Word font of Arial,

black as achybreaky heart of darkness
in the small print for artists
both unremarkable & indelible.
What I got stuck into & absorbed was Artist as
a halfgod’s endometrium or heart or wrist,

whose breakdown loses ichor all the colours
of the torrent-bow, but only deaths of dorados
have that aesthetic merit. Red dries black, sure
as life just drains life, sure as the bloodjet

and inkjet were never separate.

Can’t ask Mark Speight
if Art miscreates artists
for its tragic autopilot bait.

Mark, tell Tom Chatterton I'll meet him at the Immortal Cafe.
How will he know me? My hair won't be grey.

SHARE SO THAT I'M FAMOUS BEFORE I'M DEAD ; -)