In the early days, after the Garden of Eden, everyone understood that life was just an infinite pile of shit. Our suffering, a fertilizer for a new heaven. Every now and again a few flecks of gold would shine in. Further investigation by various saints revealed that life was actually solid gold obscured by the feces of ignorance, a species of misidentification. And for a time people were excited at the prospect of removing all the shit from the gold. A purification into heaven, a nirvana they were told. The problem was that sentient life was predicated on the shit. You remove it or burn it away and you kill it, as many a monstrous dictator has since learned. So alchemy was invented, the idea of turning shit into gold, but nothing seemed to work or so we’ve been told.
But fear not dear friends for there are great artists and their secrets involve identifying themselves as the actual gold and their medium is human excrement. Tis the creative process of all true art. Of course it all falls apart, but perhaps that’s the most sublime truth in all the happy failures of creation.
Leonardo was one such master, painting The Last Supper not in the usual fresco of plaster, but using actual pigments of human shit. He never told anyone, for the pope would’ve had a fit, buried him twelve feet under with the rest of the prophets.
The legend says that Christs face was fittingly born by Leonardo using the poop of a virgin. One whose name the whole world remembers still.
The Mona Lisa
with her shit eating grin
Where did the human end
and the God begin
Time reveals all secrets
but so does gin
Perhaps its time you stopped praying
and rejoice in all this glorious sin.
