Red Disaster (the poem, not the Andy Warhol silkscreen!)

I have to confess:  I never read ART CRITQUES or art journals because personally, I do not want anyONE else’s opinions, interpretations and art prejudices to frame MY experience with a piece of ART (of any media.)  I prefer to experience art (as well as LIFE) a la tabula rasa, or better yet-- as a “blank canvass.”  We SEE art (and the world) as we are…and to demonstrate this fact, I wrote a poem…

Red Disaster (Andy Warhol) 

Red Disaster (Inspired by Andy Warhol)

By Kelly N. Patterson

A brazen, threatening image:

Colossal black and red silkscreen painting

Not one, but twelve icons

Of the progressive, industrialized tool of execution:

Sing Sing’s electric throne

Hanging on the aristocratic walls

Of the Fine Arts Museum

Which inspired Hoffman and Conrad to argue in public.

Conrad commented lightly on the primitive element

Co-existing in modern culture

Death penalty:

Powerful, irreversible commodity

Sani-flush for the degenerate and evil

Antiseptic flush of all human waste.

Hoffman did not appreciate Conrad’s capriciousness

Red is the blood of the prisoner

Black, profound darkness in a lottery-like deeply racial system

He who hath a good lawyer

Hath life.

Thus Hoffman and Conrad continued to argue in public

Until the close of the museum.

Upon parting they vowed to never discuss political issues with one another again.

Hoffman and Conrad never went to the Fine Arts museum again.