He’s a great painter,
hands skilled in light and shadow,
canvas after canvas bending to his will.
Landscapes, faces, still lifes
he’s captured them all,
each stroke praised, each color admired.
But this painting,
this one refuses to bend.
He needs the crimson pomegranate,
a shade that dances between ripeness and fire,
but every mixture of oil and pigment
falls flat, dull, lifeless.
He experiments, obsessively,
hours into nights,
days folding into each other.
Nothing achieves the hue he dreams.
Nothing breathes.
Then, in a sudden, terrible clarity,
he understands:
his perfect crimson pomegranate
requires human blood.
A chill spreads through him.
The formula whispers its demand.
Will he let obsession claim him?
Will he paint the color at the cost of life?
The canvas waits, unjudging,
but the choice…
the choice is his alone.
There is no God in this lightbulb.
Only the slow hum of its dying.
My shadow curls in the shape of a fetus
on the tile floor,
unwanted by chairs,
forgotten by the table.
I sip yesterday's coffee like a ritual.
Cold. Black.
It does not speak to me
but I pretend it does.
The walls are beige and unjudging.
They do not hate me.
They simply watch.
Their silence is sterile,
like the nurse who saw me cry at twelve
and said, You'll grow out of it.
I trace the dust on the window ledge
like it's a constellation
one only I remember.
Even the spiders don't write here anymore.
Their threads gave up last winter
when I stopped praying.
Outside,
the city is still sinning.
It wears neon like confession.
But I stay here,
an apostate in a cubicle cathedral,
waiting for my name to mean something
to someone
again.
He fled the gazes of his brood --
They cut his soul with faces
sharp from lack of food.
Although their mouths
Voiced no complaint,
Their steady, unaccusing stares
Were so much more than he could bear --
This hero of two foreign wars.
He cowers now in alleyways
(And drinks his courage from a jar)
Beneath a far, unjudging star.
Priceless perfection in every direction
to taunt and to tease and to tear up one's eyes
Staunch circumvention beyond clear reflection
which winds up the wheels just a little too tight
Why do we bother to tread on each other
with tires of metal and spears?
When one good well wisher, a brother, a sister
has the power to speak and to heal?
I'll be your sister, your heart and well wisher
the unjudging eyes which will swallow your pain
For there's no exception, exempt from perfection
wind striving breaks you and saps you in vain
Priceless perfection in every direction
only exists in the underdog's view
and you dear, are brilliant, determined and valiant,
you'll rise handsomely from the life you've been through.
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