Grabbing Colors With Vincent

Running fast thru Autumn’s dream, Vincent-bright in village winter’s light Topaz-treed streets, eaves-filled , singing with saffron and gold, A Rocky Mountain cold cornflower sky over English hills Vivid with Vincent-fuzzy ice-finger edges Photo-album best parts of all seasons rolled into one As if my life’s heyday was being relived fast My poetry tries to regrab life with words, to pin it down, Know it, drain it, before almost losing it - maximum squeeze-out like my friends Three whose dreams failed but were glad to have them. I should try to smoke the midnight toke with Coleridge Kubla Khan’s dope dream-dome of sunny ice like this village A family in a moving car in a vision once I saw: Could I revive within me its symphony and song, To such a deep delight 't would win me, with his combined vision of Autumn-dark-gold-cold-white-trackless-snow-frosty-clear-air But I cannot revive so I must recreate in words I should try to sing a love song with Eliot, and I run and shout Let us go then you and I, where dreams spread out beneath the sky Of intensely cold blue, like a patient etherized upon a table To expose my memories for surgical scrutiny under glare of operating theatre lamps As the journey unfolds, the folds of the dream curtain spread out below you, Please treat me kindly in the darkness Running-after-ice-fire-heat-gold-flame-old-love-worn-out-too-tired Unasleep, I should try to light the midnight oil with Yeats for Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams,my children, my kids Kids-goats-horns-blow-Gabriel-heaven-cloud-fog-unclear-vision Grasping for understanding my pen digs into paper, the words dig into the past. Rain outside - drops leak and Rorschach splats mean anything and everything. Like Vincent I feel for the words: with clawed fingers I clutch at empty space, For everything already exists. I think of nothing and the words touch me - I wake and work in darkness: electric light cut off instead of an ear. Colors in life exist without words: cannot be captured; Colors in dreams are where no words can reach: like emotions. Planting wildflowers in tubs, their beauty deteriorates. Babbling streams running fast make music which no notes can describe. ........................................... Note: Quite plainly some lines are taken from Yeats and Eliot and Coleridge, to suggest the difficulty faced by poets as well as painters in capturing images of life.