I was painting a still life this morning
Of a throat loz enge sitting
on a copy of Tropic of Cancer
The only thing weird about
it is that a year ago
I never thought I'd paint anything again
I decided I wasn't ever gonna paint again
It didn't bother me too much,
Warhol's dead
David Hockney's still alive,
I don't need to paint
I painted over ten thousand paintings
Sad ones, funny ones,
dark ones and light ones
I've done haystacks and rich
old ladies by their pools
Wearing nothing but a scarf
I've painted everything
there was to paint
Now it was time to sit back,
give interviews
Get on the internet, hang
out at club med
Take stock of what I've done
You know, the best friend
I ever had was a dog
It sounds like a cliche unless it's
happened to you
Some days that dog was the only
reason I even got out of bed
That dog went everywhere with me and then
I heard the crack addicts
Were stealin' dogs and selling
them for animal research
It sounded like an urban myth to me like the
mouse in the Coke bottle
But I started leavin'
her at home after that
You know, Paula was my
wife for a while
She ran off to Paris with the
great grandson of Van Gogh
A cartoonist who did fashion
graphics for Le Monde
When Paula left she took my dog,
I never saw her again
Except in the court during the
custody battle
She won and got to keep the dog
And I didn't speak to any
one for months
Yeah, I was sittin' there
updating my list of enemies
When this girl walks in and
the universe kind of stops
Turned out she drank
the same tea as me
Don't take more than that to start
a conversation sometimes
She believed collage was the greatest
of all the arts
And was busy pasting pictures of horses,
next to ads for laundry soap
Next to Mohammed Ali,
she had a turquoise in her ear
And said Rachmaninoff was
always in her head
But later that day I was trying to describe her
to Jimmy the Wig
I couldn't find any words and I realized
I'd started to sketch her chin
Somehow it didn't look right,
I scratched it out and tried it again
I filled an entire pad, I threw it away,
I never even came close
For a six days I sat at Dino's place
The rain wouldn't quit and
no one came in
Finally on the seventh day it
cleared and in she walked
I asked her to sit with me and
I bought her a cup of tea
And I asked her to model for
me sometime
That afternoon I was at a canvas
She was wearing a yellow dress
I swore if she let me, I'd get it right
I've painted over ten
thousand paintings
Sad ones, funny ones,
dark ones, and light ones
But sitting there,
it was like I couldn't even write my own name
I apologized and said, "It's
been a few months
If you have patience,
I'll get the hang of it again"
In the next few weeks,
I painted her hundreds of times
If I get the nose right, the chin's too long
If I get 'em both right, the face is too thin
But I keep after it and one day I, I'll get
it all right
I painted a still life this morning,
of a throat lozenge
Sitting on a copy of Tropic of Cancer
The only thing was funny is that
I never thought I'd paint anything again
I think I might go visit Estelle
Those Utah mountain
s are good for the soul
I'll bring my brushes and some Jack Daniels
And we can make up for lost time