I promise that tomorrow I will rejoin society
tomorrow I will teach
and enter grades
and discuss pedagogy, lessons and curricula

I promise that tomorrow I will lecture about the judicial branch
give instructions about content theme and genre
tomorrow I will coach and advise
about code and syntax and hypertext markup language

But today I am a painter
today I am a poet
today I am a theologian
a philosopher, a maladjusted malcontent

Today I am possessed by Jackson Pollack., Willem de Kooning, Claude Monet,
Arshile Gorky
and maybe Achille-Claude Debussy too.

No drugs,
no alcohol,
maybe too much coffee
maybe the holy spirit
or some spirit-animal
maybe just automatism

Or maybe, I’ve been possesed by the spirits of
Marcel Duchamp,
Wassily Kandinsky,
and Hugo Ball
all having a ball with my basal ganglia

What rhymes with ganglia?

Galling gangly genitalia?

Damn. That was a lot of alliteration without actual profane explication!
Perhaps I am ready to return to convention, conformity and community already.

But the smell of turpentine
and the layers of oil, acrylic and gouache
that I extricated today
from my palette
like a paleontologist with a trowel
are so intoxicating.

Perhaps a few more minutes
in this other world
the one where I enjoy some espresso
with Vincent and Theo
and Frida and Diego

I promise, I’ll be me again
tomorrow.