Paint your way out.
Find sliding doors
and wide open windows
only to find the world is bound.
We give ourselves a little room
to move, call it progress
and watch as our feet shrink
out of atrophy and neglect.
There's no escape, Rothkowitz.
Not in this America.
Not in your America, either.
We lumber through this world
baboons with scared souls.
Feel the viscosity of the blood
in your veins, thick like paint,
thick like ink
on skin on paper on canvas.
Boundaries bleeding over.
Take this, you are saying. This is my blood.
Paint your own damn Holocaust,
your own cultural genocide. I am done.
A door limits movement, tells us
where to go.
A window limits vision, shows us
where we can look.
Bleed, you bastard. Bleed.
The edge of the canvas only pretends
to contain you, most
Promethean and cold
like street grids on a map.