I eat paintings,

ingesting masterpieces

so they won’t fade,

eternally preserved in the gut of me.

I scrape paint chips from my molars.

a field of grass

or a sombre lady

imprinting on my skin from the inside out;

you can see tattoos stamped

inverse, in me.

van Gogh ate yellow paint

and made a self-portrait on his tongue

of a dying man.

his rotting bones remind me:

not every piece of art is paired with a description,

some walk backwards,

emerge from the soil,

or live on the body,

are handfuls of salt

and mouthfuls of sand.

you have to learn to spot them

without a label lauding them.

someday a man will cut me open and find

half of the National Gallery

caught in my oesophagus,

the stains of lead paints

and poppy pollen,

cave paintings in the cavern of my ribs;

my body a relic, peeling,

a testament to art and time.

the mortician will take one look,

and once they remove the blood

and the gas from me,

they will wonder,

like all great art

and sculpted things,

what I was thinking, and

what it all means.