Abstract Expression

Kadinsky said abstract is concrete.

Pollack captured Shakespeare

when he showed us the figure

submerged five fanthoms deep

as beneath man's physical form

our phantasms trapped inside

explore the many dimensions

within us all...and Frank drank.

The paint became important

like the blood encased within

as much as the vein itself.

To augur your own arteries

suddenly became divine.

The art of self-discovery

was about the pleasure principle

because to please yourself

as an artist requires you

to process your feelings

into the product and become

one with the work...

or something like that.

Gorky called it the stuff of thought

Newman the metaphysical problem

of the part seeking the whole and

others an instinctive response

to the crisis of modern man.

Jackson knew it had a life all its own

a life full of spit and ash

of littered whiskey-stained breathings

and mad ranting raves as the painter

crawled into the canvas

to explore the nightmarish globbings

and chase the demon dreams

across the purity of the universe

that is within us all.