2 Poems featuring A Century of Art

"MAN S FEET HAVE GROWN/SO BIG THAT HE/FORGETS HIS LITTLENESS"--DON MARQUIS

A Century of Art

Everything in this chummy little place talks

to your face without stopping to look and see who you really are, turns into

fruits and grains, finally filling the room

with its definite fields of prismatic color. Each color can

have a distance to it that

folds like a household of individual

hums among hunched over laughing lunchtime monks. I've lived in several of

these exploding frameworks myself because I

was lifted onto the tip of

a possessed brush by someone who

loved me enough to wash me

down on their own afternoon canvas.

These lives we lead are so

much more than just for ourselves

to enjoy, but the pain and

problems are real. Still when you

see yourself represented as wheat or

clouds or even by invisible winds

blowing at the harbor you can't

help but be amazed at the

fertile mind of the creative life.

It obviously sits all around us and

simply waits to be turned on 

by the right fingers at the

right time like the undulating wharves 

of dawn with its hiccup of

illuminated, gliding fish just below its fast breaking surface. It's enough to

get you to the next light and beyond even that long road if you care to know I swear it's clear and blue and truer than true.

Plea for a Different Color Sky

This one is making me feel particularly

so awfully numb right now. It frightens the someone inside

me who is already a little scared

of everything going. I know the obvious

choice is to wait and quietly return again, eager

to listen and to always enjoy whatever

is on the present big screen. Sometimes I

can do this with no more pain

than a small lump in the throat.

Other times like right here I wish

for a warm hand to press mine

to, with nothing more present than the

one simple pure act of unselfish human faith.