Miroism
by Odin Roark

From geometric shapes of youth’s surety,
to more freedom of expression
only age allowed him,
Miro refuses to end.

Fearing not death,
only the dwindling and drought
that might inhibit the brushes,
fingers,
and inordinate paint
of his mind,
with disdain did he sleep.

Cave-like,
his studio of rough stone
and asymmetry of walls,
cocooned his creativity
for freedom of mind to conjure,
identify,
color,
shape,
and adopt texture,
in total engulfment.

Before his death,
“anti-artistic” materials of youth,
the chipboard, scrap metal, et al,
merged with his canvases of lacerations and stabbings
even the nails hammered through canvases,
a plea for viewers to peer beyond the picture’s surface.

Such remains the legacy,
traveling now to distant lands,
where more exhibitions
will embrace believers,
as well as recruit the curious.
For as his grandson said,
“my grandfather was a primitive poet,
who also always liked to recall that art had
been in decadence since the cave men.”

Such is the paradox…
Where the infinite enjoins the temporary,
Where only deniers might say the progress
of Miroism is truly at an end.

Viva Miro!