The Artist

She was an artist. She was an artist in the most enticing of forms. She could paint a picture in your mind with her body. She could recall to your chest the feeling of a thousand legions of sex. She was a drug. She was the cruel bite of whiskey on your tongue after you were done with your binge, or were you just taking a breath? She was beautiful. She was an artist. 

In the realm of club dancers and cage dancers and pole dancers and the go-gos in the big boots, the spikes, the glitter, the grotesque mask on the desires of a woman in order to taper to the desires of men, she didn’t wear a mask because she wore nothing. She was honest and so she was an artist.

She could awaken in you the kind of respect for the female form that makes a good man say “Amen.” She was reminiscent of the goddess, or was the goddess reminiscent of her? She had within her, withon her, without her, flaws and scars, marks of beauty and marks of anger, but she drew your eyes to them as though they were brush strokes and not as though they needed to be hidden. 

She was a woman. She was a woman. She was an artist because she was a woman.

She refused to be plated in glass, she refused to be guarded by stern-faced men, she refused to let them take their pictures, she would not let living and breathing reenactment of creation be placed within a museum, and so she ran. 

In her running she found nothing. In her running she found cheap. In her running she tripped over plastic, plastic, paper and plastic, flimsy promises and cheap, cheap sex. 

And no one ever saw that she was an artist. 

So no one ever saw that she was a woman.