Ode to the other half of the Unfinished Horse

You know the one,
where one half shows the glorious detail and well toned muscles of an incomplete horse
and the other half barely a doodle,
spindly stick legs extending from the crude rectangle of a body with a cartoony head on top of it,
Ali Batı’s clever drawing signifying the progress of an artist,
now itself a canvas for whichever convenient meme about incomplete efforts.
It has become a true Centaur:
head and body quite different animals, literally and figuratively.
But perhaps there is an obvious new meaning in this now old favorite
when everyone can make a horsey of their choice at the press of a button.
It is the side of the doodle of honest but clumsy intent that needs cheering more
in this brief accursed moment while we gather our wits
as we are dazzled by the endless stream of shiny.
Not because refinement and excellence are any less important than they were before
—Hokusai, when asked why he was still practicing drawing at the age of ninety,
rumoredly answers: “Because I am finally getting good at it”—
but because

anyway it not complicated
i like honest effort
and bit of niceness even if not clever
maybe dont trust machine just because it wears human words
or its owner
trillonaire that says homeless are to blame
side with the genocided not the genocider
dont ask “are they legal” as if to decide “are they human”
and think of any lost dignity as your own
find strengh in brave friends
even if they too are unfini

Melih Sener