Paper Covers Gun

2019, acrylic & charcoal on hemp canvas; 22 x 32 inches

Paper Covers Gun

I like to do things I’m not good at; self doubt is a lodestone
to attract weird experience. Can a life spent wholly in doubt
keep one closer to the great mystery of meaning? Doubt
is like a blank maintained within. Not a blank as in a gun’s
ammunition, but as in paper. Paper covers Gun.
One night, in the last of my scary intruder dreams, where
his fat white —what we have here is a failure to communicate—
face pushes into mine as I struggle to hold the door
against rape, was interrupted by a weird new ending:
I don’t wait in the house. I walk out the door, still terrified
but using that blank within to confront him on the walkway
where I push a pencil —from the sharp point to the pink eraser—
right into that spot on his forehead we call the inner eye.
That’s how I stop him. That’s the pencil I use to write blanks.