Trading modern for masters, I left the Pinakothek der Moderne for the Alte Pinakothek.
Paneled windows and tan stone replaced the overwhelming white of my first destination. The renaissance revival architecture a clear indication of the museum’s contrast collection.
Founded in 1836 by Ludwig I of Bavaria, the Alte Pinakothek houses one of the oldest art collections in the world.
Over 700 paintings populate its walls, art by Europe’s old masters spanning from the 14th to 18th century. The wonder of their world immortalized before me.
Trailing my eyes over the ancient flicks of oiled color, my mind dissolved into the stories bursting through each stroke.
The Fairer Sex
Fine Lady,
your flesh is too white for truth,
white enough to suffocate your pores,
a different kind of corset in powdered lead,
you bargin a slow death for idle perfection.
Finest silk,
Poised & Polished
Languid & Limited
No sharp edges to your tongue,
no harsh threads bristling his hand on the small of your back,
all lines soft to the touch.
Delicate, your defense.
Lazy, your lie.
Guarded and ignorant to manly matters,
you pull loose strings and unfurl hidden triggers,
you touch ivory notes with feeble fingers,
you seduce glances with supple skin.
You find power in your soft,
buried in the droop of your eyes,
in their lust for your body,
in the limbs you are allowed, and
twirling your virtue signed over with deeds and discretion.
Judgment
Severance & Reunions.
Love & blood & the wandering bodies of naked men
nursed to health by Homer’s womanly words.
Caressed and cut by mythic fates- disturbed by discontented Gods,
their jealous egos staining creation.
Reaching with flawless fingers for golden validation,
for the authority of their particular beauty,
in last judgment, they laugh.
Too plump with pride to see the cliff and what crux lies below.
These petty Gods drowned out by a more covetous God,
He takes all divisions and divinity.
Smiling the devil’s teeth
in the face of flesh.
Damning the forked tongue he sliced,
ugly is the enemy. He calls
erase your ego.
For your God holds all pride
for Himself. A divine blanket
to cover His manly insecurities,
to ease the threat of self-love,
condemned by this free love’s snaking eclipse of devotion.
Sacrifice your severed sons,
and still, it is not enough.
There are no complex corridors in the pure mind.
To question is to condemn.
Close your eyes.
Stay silent as we trade one fantasy for another.
Drown beneath your own blood and thank Him.
Watch within as your iron paints over clouded Olympus with His gated heaven.
The Question of Virtue
How many versions of my falsehood have been painted by the faithful?
Never have I laid with a man. Only angels,
So my story goes.
My pure iris watches these men believe the right woman,
bolstered by her husband’s immaculate conviction.
His denial deemed faith enough to cover my unfaithful.
This power of innocence & ignorance.
My greatest indiscretion,
the proof in my child’s karmic arc.
His fateful cross mine to bear for justice.
Penence for the blade I drew through his father,
a vengeful passion left over from his draw through me.
The consequence of the stains on my soul
tracked in the blood I painted red on the floor.
A tragedy of trauma,
an act of an expanding universe.
I must believe the strings are pulled by God,
hold his son’s head in my hands and hear the voice of heaven.
In my dreams and delusions, He seduces me.
Him, the taste on my tongue and the name I spit
to believe my womanly deception.
Pre & Post Impressionist
Embraced by the 1800s common ground,
these lines dart & dash in visions
clouded & close they come together
as you depart.
Van Gogh’s insanely sanctified in sunflowers,
Manet’s layered in a vision of Monet,
Monet in his aqua white flurish.
Brushstrokes touched with the sameness
of afternoon cigarettes ashed on cobblestone
blown to dust by shared conversation.
Cradled in the 2000s they still converse.
Across galleries their eyes meet,
their scenes moving in wooden frames,
touching still-their impression
burned behind their beholder’s eyes.
Side by side in arts infamous severance,
neighbors kept in canvased immortality.
Nomadic Thread 