from the time we breach the birth canal, nature & nurture work with & against event & circumstance to render an image of what love ought to be
an effigy of the transitory
at first chance the fledgling artist emerges and proceeds to imprint that image on every surface that manages to hold the eye without regard to
how the canvas will receive the media
but when what we expect
falls shorter than
we could have ever wildly imagined
misplaced blame will cuss our currency, and set out to slay deities and fates alike
the colors run, the linen buckles,
the structure weakens, the easel bends
the bristles dry, the fumes solidify and cement and the wood warps and weathers
and once rust finds the metal that supports the instrument you may as well throw it out
lest it stain your masterpiece
vilify your claim to fame
mar your good name
so if you find yourself lookin’ round
like “yo’ love don’t look like mine”
you’d do best to take up photography
Category: Ides of Madness
final hours
on the day before we close our eyes
we’ll beg forgiveness for our sins
and settle up with soothes and lies
with heavy heart, make brief good byes
alike with enemies and friends
on the day before we close our eyes
for we who know, for what we die
should gather up our wounds to mend
and settle up with soothes and lies
we’ll spend these moments cutting ties
or mending those with loosened ends
on the day before we close our eyes
kudos to we who know and vie
to mourn our loss, and so, intend
to settle up with soothes and lies
so at long last we’ll raise our cry
and treasure what we must defend
on the day before we close our eyes
and settle up with soothes and lies
The Ides of Madness
right in the thick of the best years of a girl’s life
when what she wants and what she needs come close enough to what she has
to breathe joy into every waking moment
in the thick of it, madness sets in
sets in so heavily so surreptitiously
that it creates a chasm
an unidentifiable emptiness a deep blackness void of sense that she cannot express or name or even locate
let alone avoid
creates a chasm that starts a skip in the record
things she knows she knew keep getting lost in the dark dropped without a sound into this betrayal of her own mind’s making each step has equal opportunity
to land in clarity or confusion
learn and forget and learn and learn and then…
what she immediately recognizes
as a warning cannot be heeded
instead it catalyzes a long latent mixture of curiosity and arrogance and push…
in her mind it looks like adventure on her face it looks like bravery
on the page it looks like lunacy
and she knows she knows better but the blackness lends better to the whim and disguises it as challenge
and madness does not bend to challenge
instead it evolves and manifests creates a thirst, silo and a prison
for submission, wrath and compassion
when we apply 8th grade math
12th grade science and grad school philosophy these factors produce only one outcome tenacious and unbridled honesty
barring not a single hold
and with that the joy returns
out of the black despite the black
to spite the black
and whether its denial or acceptance
it’s done
and the madness subsides
emotional husbandry cultivating joy with pain with truth…
truth that sheds just enough light
on the chasm
to see the devil’s shame
name callin’
just to the left of love
in between lust
and insanity
i lie
as you trace my emotions
with your words you speak soft
and slip sweet everythings
in my ear
enough to drive a girl
to stop drinking
is the intoxication
of the sugar that you spill
i don’t know where to put this in my heart
i’m perforated and easy to pull apart
hungry enough to try and steal
what you so willingly give
satiate my thirst
satisfy the urge
but wait…
don’t
if it gets any better
i may be lost wondering where i left
my poise and reservation
i keep trying to walk away but every time
we part
i come
apart
trying to get around
the places you send me
a rambler on the paradise-despair line
i keep trying to walk away
but your reach is
just long enough and
just strong enough to pull your name
from my chest long and slow
along with whatever good sense
i have left
the beast
oh, what a wicked, nefarious fit
rioting the mind
soliloquy bent on wielding wit
to wage a war on time
a soul as mild as scent on shade
is nearly as aware
apropos and apt to writ
with all who’ll wager fare
softly from her haunches
saunters sweetly, slight askew
all to the nines in nuances
noticed by too few
be wary though, the drive is strong
and lines have yet been drawn
’round the siren shard that slices dawn
with words that don’t belong
for the facets of the whole at helm
are too many to be bound
but the poet – as a separate self
is a madness
walkin’round
having writ
on the cusp of surrenderthe artist weighs a maybe on a plea
maybe
if i set my engine to this ache
my mind could get some rest
if i write it down, if i sing it loud, if i oil it to the canvas
being stabbed or shook or drowned it will pass silently in the night
and so she digs – gouges into what ails her
hollows her heart to spare the tissue around it
and with the final stroke, there it be
the masterpiece she’d grow to love
more than hate the thing that made it
a riot of residual emotion
in her living room
staring her in the soul
just so happened this time the demon
begat a beautiful piece of sky
with hues of you against a finer cloth
than you’d seen in these parts
in at least month of Sundays
motivation clad in the keepsake of that sanguinary battle ‘tween the bitter and the sweet
spirit@peace&joy@hand 