If only philosophy was the answer.
It seems giant slices of our pie
have the fruit squeezed out and
all the flavor of what could have
been is pooled in a big empty
chock full of can’t be done.
There was a time,
I was young, so that’s my excuse,
I thought I’d be an artist, but my father
disabused me of that foolishness.
I was good at it too, just not good enough.
Oh! The things I could do with red!
I traded my brush for a fountain pen,
a Waterman for my poems, and the
nib is gold. I have a rainbow of inks
made of words ground to powder and
mixed with saltwater from seas whose
waves I rode till I was beaten, almost dead.
I paint on loose leaf canvasses
that never get hung on walls and
cannot be seen with fewer than three
eyes. Stop, children, what’s that sound?
It is the echo of what we were before
we exchanged beauty for delusion,
truth for knowledge.
I paint because I must, the voices are
too loud, the demon’s snarl too urgent,
full of flames, full of force, fueled by
burning coals of cold doubt and empty angst.
We stir our masterpieces with skeletal hands
and with bones of destruction in flawed bowls.
It is all I can do to not paint
everything red as fire, or yellow as
a bobcat’s eye because the world
might end in Ragnarök after all,
we the people buried under sparkles
of glacial aquamarine, bleak as dreams.
Even our passions fall short, for we are blind,
looking through a darkened glass. Creation
is fraught with the imperfections we’ve come
to expect in this disappointment of desires.
We live in shallow waters, miles from shore
satisfied but afraid of being, afraid of depth.
We always aim higher than our wings
can go: beat the air, follow the sun, and
drown like Icarus.
hello dearest poet I paint and write much like you because I have to it is a passion I burn with great write❤
Crimsin,
From what I have read of your work, I know it’s true…
Vol
Stop, children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s goin’ round.
There are so many reasons to write…I am not exactly sure why I do, I just do. I feel like a conduit
meant to put the words down that come to me…and I have no idea from where they come.
But my pen is my brush…I feel like a Pollack when I write…I just throw the words anywhere they want to go.
And yes, Vol, “we do aim higher than our wings”—
Maybe part of our drive is to write the one great poem that will make us famous, or at least known.
j.
Jacob!
Hello! Thanks for stopping by! A poet I knew in my Nashville days once told me, “You know Vol, there are two kinds of poems, “Bullshit poems and horseshit poems…Some come out in one big squirt, the other in hard clumps.” I am with you, sir… but as of right now I can think of a third kind… Constipated, when none want to come at all…
Vol
You have always had a way of searching and finding clues that make sense of emotions and what they can do to somebody’s life.. its glorious happiness, its intense admission that being can be lonesome at times.
‘We live in shallow waters, miles from shore
satisfied but afraid of being, afraid of depth.
We always aim higher than our wings’
From start to finish a gentle confession but the finish suggests more – aiming higher is the adventure and eageress of seeing what others tragically miss. Your pen is mightier than most, tis the gold that makes magic, sir.
Joy,
You are the crucible where where I want all my poems to be tested. Thank you for these words of encouragement.
Vol
Am more than ready to review and then offer my thoughts, sir.
‘It is all I can do to not paint
everything red as fire, or yellow as
a bobcat’s eye because the world
might end in Ragnarök after all,
we the people buried under sparkles
of glacial aquamarine, bleak as dreams.’
From start to final word, the above is a brilliant canvas, Vol
Thank you, Joy… If YOU like it that’s enough for me…