Illusion of Art

The sentences come back
as I write them
& resent being erased,
deleted, or changed. They’re ineradicable now,
welded like buckshot remnants
to that invisible page of desire
where the impetus to make art awaits
impatiently, as fingertips strafing Braille
in your unconscious mind
where it’s always 3 a.m.
in Scott Fitzgerald’s soul–but you can’t throw them
or him out into the street
where thoughts enunciate themselves
(with rhetorical flourishing!)
Far from the blank page
on your computer screen
where faint radioactive emanations
persistently grope for
all the imprisoned writers of the world
mentally chained to machines
& inherited obsolete concepts
that should remain unwritten,
unthought, undisturbed,
the way mirage water puddles
on distant roads are
in the sunlight,
before you race towards them
& they disappear.

 

“Illusion of Art” was written by Peter Magliocco and published by Virgogray Press in his 2010 chapbook, Nude Poetry Garage Sale.