Do you know what a banshee is? I's a creature that screams creates chaos haunting me late at night with its song of loss as I try to sleep. The terror it creates reminds me I am breathing still alive. Maybe life is simply about passage and loss. Our expectations destroy us. What's important? Try freedom, fantasy, vision, warmth, strength, love, respect, some kind of understanding and harmony. Fuck real estate! Fuck golf. I'm a painter and that's dirty to you. My stained fingers tangled hair breath language jeans genitals boots. Brown. More or less painters are fools stubborn children ranting stumbling rudimentary oversensitive out of control inclined to mistakes devoted to creating masterpiece passionate tormented ridiculous tragic aloof. What happened to me? I look in mirror up into eyes down at body. There is so much frustration rage pent up inside. Just when I thought finally resigned to reality I’m absolutely lost cause, I meet a woman. I just want to fall into her lap call it home. Someone came up to me at art opening asked, "I don't understand. You're so wild and your paintings are so sublime. Do you honestly feel such balance?" I answered, "My paintings have nothing to do with how I behave socially." I love bacon, chocolate, vodka, cigarettes unsafe sex. A little S & M never hurt anyone. My new love refused insisting she did not want to feel any pain. Red. I struck myself instead repeatedly while she gasped horrified. She cried, “I can’t believe you destroyed paintings you love more than me.” The regretted Fontana act. My new love wanted beauty. I brought her terror. Oh God, what have I done this time? Unanswerable telephone rings and rings. Canvases lay lifeless on floor, kicked punched through ripped. Desolate silence hangs in gray vacuum. Her black leather gloves forgotten in haste of escape wait hopelessly on table. I climb into bed, embrace my dog consider myself fortunate to at least have this.

previously titled crisis #5 Chicago 1990