on a drum a painter sits//
smearing ochre pollen onto cobalt
blue//
fingertips rusting with
electric violence.
He burns canvas in mercury//
his liberty was born of Goa/
nails scrape fluid onto the form of
papyrus//
with it he creates a
poetess/
whose ink spills
magenta.
goddess, heiress, martyr;
madonna, whore?!
they are found distilled
from
generations of
slaughtered intellectuals/
she writes in a temple with
tibetan nuns//
sonnets, haikus, ideologies of
dangerous artists/
she pens a letter to him in ancient
hebrew/
A truce of Gilgamesh//
In it, there is
no us against
them/
© Alicia Khoo
September 2012
Written on a boat between Phuket and Phi Phi Island
A dedication to Finger Painting Artist Alex Rodrigues
