Work Text:
The yellow tasted bitter in Vincent’s mouth
The very same yellow he used to paint the squalid floors of the night café
The very same yellow he used to paint the shriveling olive trees under the summer sky
The very same yellow he used to paint the desolate face of Dr. Gachet
The yellow tasted bitter in Vincent’s mouth
Stately, as the glowing walls that shone upon the bustling café
Breezy, as the wallowing gleam of the wheatfields
Cozy, as the blooming sway of the sunflowers
Where people gather under the starry starry night
There mustn't be a line
Between the art and the artist
Or else a very cold winter might find
The doubling graveyard beneath the mist
Thrice the number of hollow faces in black
Depression and
The perpetual state of heightened melancholia
Me and you, they, them, us
Cry too
We as mortal souls
As wandering travelers on this planet of desolation
As outsiders, unsure of the will of the universe
We are born to be anxious, thus to suffer
Art, creating art
is not merely insulin for the sick
It’s like a medicine for the heart
that bore its will from a discontent prick
Because with every brush,
every word,
every note,
every thrust,
every shut,
every clank.
There is, ultimately
a despairing spirit of the artist
seeping and staggering to the little sliver of light from inside those dark corridors
We must always remember
That a rainbow only comes after the most harrowing of rainfall