Paint

Silly girl, half of this is in my mind
or used to be; I don’t know what I’ve started
or if it [can?] [must] end.
Silly girl, making something out of nothing.
But I already know
that’s all we do anyway.

I live in a world of thoughts built on thoughts,
pain on words on dreams on words again.
Where did it all begin? [Suggestion is powerful.
Possibility so wants to be reality
it doesn’t remember how subjective truth can be.]

Silly girl, look what I’ve done;
what I’ve started, what I’ve ended, what I’ve killed.
I describe it in great grand metaphors
that don’t mean anything at all.
Nothing becomes a something never there.
Words are good at painting pictures
on canvases that once seemed so clearly white.

But humanity craves complication.
We wallow in our confusion, our chaos of complexities,
pursuing clarity with reaching arms—
but wait! stop to think, to realize:
perfect order is gleaming polished stone—
flawless, sterile, dead.
There’s a certain beauty in utter emptiness
that no one can be alive to see.
So we admire the canvas in theory
as we paint.

I’m layered in pigments stiff and heavy on my skin.
I leave charcoal-smudged footprints on concrete;
watercolor drips from my fingertips.
Life imitates art, haven’t you heard?
[Ah, but who’s the artist?]
We flash a collective paint-smudged grin
and bow.