The Artist wanted to paint America.

Took all the canvas in the studio out to a parking lot in a plaza in a small Massachusetts town.

Laid out paints and pigments, pots of blood drawn from a cut on the wrist, blood mixed with ashes of old sheet music and legal forms, dirt in rain water, boiled down hides and hair.

Set the canvases up on easels and car hoods. Laid them flat on sidewalk and asphalt.

Screamed to the curious folks gathering to see, 

I cannot do it alone.
I fail at doing it alone.
I am crushed here doing it alone. 

Started tossing brushes at the Crowd.

Seized some by the shirt and tried to pull them to the canvases. 

There was whining and the artist was rudely shoved.

The crowd whimpered at the artist,

This is your job.
Your one job.
If it crushes you that is how we are best satisfied.
We don’t know what to paint. 

Accountants of the captains of industry showed up with sharp pencils and started precision drawings on the canvases.

Penciled in numbers, made up numbers:

here is what this should look like here,
here is the right shade for this face, this hand, this heart,
this hole in the skin, this slit in the eye,
this bit of necessary damage,
this hot mistake,
this brand,
this logo, this loop,
this flag.

This is how you paint America, they told the crowd.

The crowd stepped to it glad to know the rules and filled in the colors right and tight between the perfect lines.

When they ran out of blood, they made do with the artist.

What a genius,
they said,
once the artist was dead.