Dangerous Love

Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art. Pablo Picasso

How do we prepare ourselves for the danger of art? Children do this so well, Picasso talks a great deal about children and art—the only true artist. Say dangerous words around preschoolers and they will be on you like a tick, to a dog.

Love. Hate. Death. They seek this danger. I have never met a child who builds safe little homes; they build bridges, wars, cathedrals. They kill off who they love and they bring us back again.

I long for my poetry to be dangerous, to seek out exactly who it is I am afraid to see, to write it all down. I had this wonderful discussion with someone about knowing. I have always had this deep sense of knowing. Writing for me is this long talk with myself, yet even to write that, contains the word and it's so much more.

Where it is chaste, it is not art Where it is controlled, where the poem is told to go that is not beauty. We have all read them. The ones that are crafted so well and the others, the others which make no sense because it should not work, not really. It is more than the sum of its parts.