No one works this hard...

"Coyote is a trickster and a clown
Yet the most serious person you’ll find

Coyote is the smoking mirror
Where we look for personal beauty
And see our vanity staring at us

If coyote sees you being sorry for yourself
He’ll grab you and beat you up
Then take your spot
And start doing the same things you were doing
So you can see yourself

Coyote never follows
Yet he’s there with you at all times

The other day
I waited and waited for him at the airport
Right next to the arrivals gate
Then he yelled my name
All the way from the departures door
Laughing at me and my backward ways

Coyote comes dancing
And takes or gives me my comfort zone
With a big scalpel or a smile

Coyote is a space cadet, yet a genius
Even if to you talking backwards makes no sense
This was something that his third grade teacher
Couldn’t understand

Coyote is a jerk on the third day of dancing when I am starving
And he speaks of his breakfast coffee, steak and eggs

Coyotito stole my mate
And saved me form a certain heart pain

I went with Coyote to a winter sweat the other day
He insisted to uncle to please give us some warmth
While he was freezing we were melting
Once done
We were running for cover
While he jumped naked in the snow

Coyote speaks of being tired
Yet I have never seen him rest

I found him drinking cold lemonade in the jungle
As I was struggling to climb for dear life
And to breath some air

I saw him in the dessert
I saw him in the plains
I saw him right by the door in the tipi meeting
I see him all over at Sundance
I saw him in the hill
And If I am not careful
He’ll write for this me…"

~ "Chuntaro's Corner"

Art ~ "After a near-fatal bout with Crohn’s Disease in early 1985, Markus Pierson  declared that the accountant was “dead” and in his place was a man pursuing his dream of becoming a successful artist.

The Coyote Series was born in June of 1986, after Markus heard the Joni Mitchell song, “Coyote.” He loved it, played it often and memorized the words. The focus of the song, a guy referred to as “Coyote,” is a reckless, footloose Casanova type fellow – Pierson aspired to be the carefree romancer described in those lyrics. Then he did something he’d never done before or since: Markus made a drawing of a song.

  Over the next six months Markus painted billboards by day for a living and drew his Coyotes into the night. To the wall above his desk he taped these words, “No one works this hard and this smart – and has it come to nothing.” Within a year, he walked out of Artexpo in New York City with commitments from 110 art galleries who sought to represent his work."

Markus’ wife and muse is artist, Sher Pierson. The two live and work in a converted loft in Kansas City, Missouri.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that my success has more to do with luck than talent, more to do with stubbornness than vision, more to do with ignorance than insight, but the fact remains that I pursued my dream and attained it against staggering odds. I say this now to anyone who will listen: even if I had failed, it would have been worth it. Better to face a brutal truth than to grow old wondering what might have been.” Markus Pierson