"Why poetry?" You asked

The answer was immediate, as a flood.

"Because words are my favourite method of creativity. As an artist, I learned there are over 16 million colours and no combination of any number of them will ever mean more than three short words. Of those sixteen million colours only one matters to me. The colour of your eyes; and no painting will ever mean more to me than 'I love you'." I said in reply.

4am tears, undergrad took 5 years
you left in exam season, the feast of my fears
i graduate in 2 weeks, crazy timing
you were mine once upon a winters timing
the blue flowers bloomed like Novalis
i am troubled and dramatic
where art thou romeo
where art thou pair
where art thou romeo
where art thou chèr

The brittle oak legs hold up my taut canvas
They have endured years of feelings without buckling
And here they stand, facing me, asking me
When will you stop?

The splintered paintbrush drips colour on the soil beneath me Unwavering in the palm of my hand, it stays steady, solid
Yet it groans under the pressure of my fingers
Crying out for mercy with every stroke.

The canvas calls, beckoning my delivery of mind and heart
It whispers calm claims of serenity and peaceful hours
Whilst these are compelling words
There's only one use it can give to me.

The paint dries in the southern sun, untouchable but delicate
A portrait so realistic, only her stillness betrayed her
She gazes at me with lapis coloured eyes that don't move
If only I could recall who she was.

The memory of her explodes in my mind like a carpet bomb
But it's stripped away just as soon, ripped from my fingers
A crystalline tear cascades as I pummel the bare sod with fury
But until I remember again,

The brittle oak legs shake violently under my taut canvas.
The bent paintbrush leaks paint onto the soil beneath me.
The canvas whispers, beckoning my delivery of tears and anger.
The paint drips in the moonlight, distorted and warped.

There's a riot behind my ribs
a symphony of shattered thoughts
conducted by anxiety
in a room with no doors.

I wear silence like armor,
but inside-
drums beat with no rhythm,
memories clash like cymbals
and fear hums like a distant engine
that never runs out of gas.

Voices I never invited
shout louder than the ones I need.
They argue in my mind
like lawyers with no case,
pleading guilty to crimes I didn't
commit.

I laugh at the wrong times,
not because I'm happy-
but because laughter is louder
than the screaming
no one else can hear.

Some nights,
the noise is so loud,
I pray for sleep to come
like static to a broken radio.
Not to fix it-
just to blur it out.

But every morning,
I wake to the same frequency-
a mind wired wrong,
but still tuned in.

The shape of your love’s image
Makes one imagine,

The many brushstrokes –

Painting out such a masterpiece
like you, Love.

Do create something

beautiful, just practise and --


pay close attention.

Drip
Drip.
No water needed.
You cry in colour now.
Grief mixed with pigment—your palette was pain.

You are in the bathroom,
Fixing your hair the way you like it.

The steam from your shower
is setting into the bedroom now.
I can smell your shampoo.

The skylight casting an early summer glow
across the tiny water droplets speckling your skin
makes you look studded with rhinestone.

The subtle shifting of your weight
creates a curve in your side
and as you drop your hip and bend your knee,
I think for a moment,
that you look like art.

That moments like these are what inspire
The greatest artists in the world.

That I might be like them
if you were my subject,
But I am too busy loving you
To lift a paintbrush.