When you can't reply

He asks me why I paint like this,

why my paintings are so dark.

Twisted

Tortured

Violent

He moves his hands and puts an expression of pain on his face to explain something he has no words for.

I understand what he is trying to tell me,

I tell him I don’t know.

I would like to give a good answer, but I am not sharp enough.

You know, it always comes late.

When you can’t reply.

On my way home I think about his question,

There isn’t much to say;

Michelangelo’s Pietà

Crime and Punishment

Goya’s black paintings

Fate knocking at the door on Beethoven’s 5th

Hamlet

Munch

Guernica

I guess flowers, sun and grass aren’t enough to reach the deepest in ourselves.

A quick look at the Oscars’ best movies list will tell us so.

Again, I think about the expression on his face,

his gnarled hands.

Maybe that’s what we like to see in art.

What we can’t explain.

What we don’t tell,

not even to ourselves.

What happens to all of us.

What makes us human.

I really don’t know…

I would like to give a good answer, but I am not sharp enough.

You know, it always comes late.