We developed a concept
thinking we were so clever
Let's go to those parks and cafes
forget what happened there
Let's swig on swings and bleed coffee
repaint on those memories white
and spit on new canvases with each other
Popping balloons well brimmed with neon
to fix all that went wrong.

I don’t know what I was thinking
I suppose that itself was scientific poetry
The theory was beautiful and easy
but feigned to show truth.

And we wanted so hard, really
to be able to change what we wanted
and get what we deserved
But I think we forgot
we were never artists anyway, but
when you layer on a painting, it just gets thicker
and thicker still, until the paint itself sticks so far out
to the point where it collides with your ambivalent face
And everything really is still there
And that white canvas isn't clean
Seven layers of white are still grey
Underneath all that streaking alabaster
is a dense, dark mush of things we tried to forget
We can pretend that our theories led us to change
but the weight of the wall
and the protruding hills and valleys

We were never artists, anyway.