THE ART OF EMOTIONAL REPRESSION

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Displacement is the first step
The true artist trains herself
To turn never-ending streams of liquid
Into large red chunks of paint
Meaty, dripping but tangible slabs
And then she pats it
Pat, Pat, Pat
On the right
Pat, Pat, Pat
On the left
On the top
On the bottom
And now she's got a square
All that red in a box
And the thought occurs to mail it
To someone
With a label
Like the angry lyrics to a popular song
Airmail comes in many forms
But the artist knows
That if you take a vat of steaming hot water
And throw it on the paint
Suddenly
Like a hard slap in the face
It will sting severely
But begin to melt
And then you have something to work with
Something runny and pliable
Like kid's plasticine
You take a little blue here
A little green there
You use tricks you learned in art school
Intellectualization, denial, erasure
This latter is particularly effective
If you can literally
Wipe the spots of color off your eyeballs
And you try to unpack and spread
Red paint into white clouds
And you wonder if your Dad
The artist
Ever had to paint white clouds
And you marvel at how well your mom learned it
The Art of Emotional Repression.