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September 13, 2024

The Life of Pablo

Julián Martinez

In Pablo Picasso’s shirt pocket lived a tiny naked man, also named Pablo. Little Pablo emerged after Picasso wiped his semen with a balled up shirt in the wee hours of a lonely morning. Little Pablo whispered, “yes… yes… more,” to Picasso as he painted, and Picasso listened. These suggestions came to the old man as urgencies from a higher power. It was Little Pablo who told Picasso to accept the commission for a sculpture of his to be built in Chicago— this was against Picasso’s lifelong scruples but Little Pablo had other ideas. Little Pablo wanted to take over America. “Yes… no… that’s right… give it wings,” Little Pablo whispered, and Picasso obeyed. When the sketches for the sculpture were complete, Little Pablo yeeted himself into the envelope just as it was being sealed. A lightning bolt of grief tore through Picasso, though he didn’t know why— he went on to draw fucked up little guys for weeks. When the architect opened the envelope in his office, Little Pablo plopped out, gasping for air. The architect flicked the tiny naked man into the trash, landing him in a sanitation facility on the outskirts of the city. Little Pablo made it from pocket to pocket of hand-shaking men until he was in the shirt of Mikey Butters, one of Chicago’s longest-serving mobsters, but Mikey was losing his ability to do day-to-day tasks. Little Pablo whispered, “you came into the kitchen for a pen… a pen,” but the old boss whimpered and rubbed his aching head. Little Pablo jumped out of a car window, almost landing on the studded wrist of a capo, and hit the sidewalk. He ambled from alley to alley, scaring lost cats with his fiery stare, drunkenly screaming his sworn vengeance on his masters. Now Picasso is dead and Mikey Butters is dead but Little Pablo is more powerful than ever. Here he goes, telling me to tell you he’s more powerful than ever.