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The chalks burn me to cold cinders; and I am no longer inured to the savaging of time.

“Andiamo! Ho le ali. Andiamo! Let's go! I have wings. Let’s go!”

The chalk is ingrained in the grooves of my skin: a rainbow of pastel dust muddied to iron ore; the core of me, sludge now. I have drunk drudgery, through sluggish osmosis, become a cartoon fool in the lap of God, destitute: a prostitute who has sold his soul for a mess of nickel and gold; a pimp who has put a twinkle in the eye of too many madonnas and virgins.

My knees are calcified, callous to this pleading pavement: these pennies, not proper payment for such prostration. I have lived through too many winds and too many wars: my face a battlefield of random colouration; the pigment, sour and chapped; my mouth a tight slit, spitting jagged hesitation.

In the beginning I was love: a conjurer of images which flowed, empowered, from passionate hand to hearts and souls; images which filled guttering holes and stilled the wandering mind. I was in my element. I was sublime.

But now, it’s more than can be endured: the chalks burn me to cold cinders; and I am no longer inured to the savaging of time.

“Andiamo!”

Last night, my dreams held me tight: my spirit clutched in the horned fingers of Michaelangelo. I was chalk to his genius: my blood squeezed out in polychromatic pools which ebbed and flowed, shallow under the Vatican’s shadow; a magnified, deified, Delphic Sybil. In the light of the pope’s eyes, I was luscious to my creator God who, on his knees, kissed the fisherman’s ring. Then the pope and his enteurage of bishops and priests were transformed into satanic beasts: pulling on fat greasy cocks, their loads simultaneously shot, like manna from heaven, hot and acid, all over my face.

“Andiamo! I have wings. Let’s go! We can fly beyond this, this meagre scratching for silver.”

Last night, in the shambles of our tired fucking, in the throes of extinction, I was overwhelmed, nauseated by the clashing cacophony of your chalk skin rubbing against my chalk skin, the clutching of our copper fingers. For the love of God, for the love of love: there must surely be more to life than we can see.

“Andiamo! My wings will sing for us. They will raise us above this scrabbling. Andiamo! Per amore di amore.”