If the beautiful pea green boat had been painted battleship grey,the owl and the pussycat would have stayed at home and not 'sailed away for a year and a day',but it wasn't and they did.
The story ends quite badly some would say quite sadly,the pussycat got rid of the owl,stating in his defence, that fowl was for the eating of and not for spouting like a whale in Edward Lear's fairy tale.
If only the boat had been painted battleship grey the owl might still be with us today.

How is it that one man can work
on one brushstroke (and a few spots)
for almost two years?
I thought about
the oriental calligraphers
who spent a lifetime perfecting
that one brushstroke.
Suddenly,
the silence and loneliness
of the painter’s profession
pierce through my heart.

Leaf shows a simple fold
of translucent green paint
that appears as a gesture
of concealment, of implication,
as if the smallest mystery of nature,
the greenness of a leaf,
was being held and protected
within a fold of pigment.

Small reservoirs of oil and Liquin leak
from the top edge of the mark,
and where the green stroke has carried over
to the frame, the paint shows
as a dark varnish, barely perceptible.

With consummate economy,
Leaf draws together nature and art
and shows how natural things live
within and despite history.

Leaf is about the ‘time of plants’
but also about the long durée
which the single brushstroke spills.
The painted wooden frame was added later.

I'll paint my ceiling lilac
Make it twinkle with flashlight stars
I'll build a cardboard spaceship
We can fly to our orange peel mars
You'll call me your astronaut
As I pull you up to the swirling sky
Explore every marshmallow whirl
As I fall for your acorn eyes
Our bodies will be constellations
Limbs and breaths intertwined
Our souls are dot-to-dots connected
Heartbeats rhymth aligned
I painted this dream for us
Used a palette made for you and I
Every brushstroke will be worth it
You're my favourite lullaby

The poet’s quill scribes a vision of the debutante
as she rests amongst the bluebells
Scattered like jewels over the meadow.

The delicate voice of the robins
Echo through the valley,
Where the gentleman tells of his ardor
As they shelter amongst the weeping willows.

Curls tumble from the confines of her hat,
Parasol tilting to hide girlish blushes,
Careless of her silk skirts
they are crushed, lying as broken rose petals.

She glows with the joy of an un-chaperoned picnic
Scent of cinnamon scrolls tempt her senses,
as her beau offers cider to moisten their suddenly dry throats.

Dapper in his impeccable finery,
Coat tails trailing, crisply starched shirt points lifting his chin,
Top hat tilted at a rakish angle.
Dark eye’s glinting with the thrill of his endeavors.

Sunshine silhouettes the glory of the lovers,
whom the poet has sewn together
as an artist creates a masterpiece.

Each syllable as a brushstroke on canvas.
A Monet made not of oil and brushes,
But ink and parchment.
Every word scribed by the care of the poet,
Transformed within the mind of the reader

Day after day, we go through the motions
Like waves searching for shore in the middle of the ocean,
Following along as we get swept by the current
Again and again, waiting for the day it’ll end.

I was lost in this sea of people when I saw him.
A mere glimpse from my periphery, I almost missed
His tear-streaked face and his bleeding knee,
And I thought to myself, how did I not see?

My eyes caught the way his shoulders sagged
From carrying the weight of the world on his back.
He’s only a child but his fate seemed worse than Atlas,
His young body shackled by greedy insatiable hands.

I wonder if someone witnessed his despair,
Picked up a brush and decided to share
The story of a boy whose future was stolen
By heroes who were nothing but villains.

His pleas echo in every brushstroke
And while my hands can never replicate
The vivid imagery offered by paint
He can live on in the words I create.

late last night i walked alone along the desolate shore
of Monet’s pond at Giverny the pale moon
sometimes obscured by impasto clouds
the waterlilies those treacherous waterlilies
screaming in agony
Saskia, Rembrandt’s wife, was there
naked and weeping, her hair and body
wet and slimy draped in orange pond algae
Cezanne crouched nearby cursing and slashing canvases
with a butcher’s knife before tossing them into a fire
when he finished he made fierce love to Saskia
who sang an old Dutch love song as he did
Rembrandt was in deep conversation with Monet
in a puddle of passing moonlight
and didn’t seemed to mind, anything
to stop her endless wailing I heard him say
Monet says Titian’s mistress is now a mermaid
who lives beneath my betraying waterlilies which is why they cry
and why I keep painting them no one makes love like her
just look at Titian’s Madonnas
Van Gogh stumbles in from a dung-filled alley, bleeding badly
from the bullet wound in his abdomen,
where the rich kids from Auvers tormented and shot him
just for the fun of it, Vermeer bankrupt and gaunt
steps from behind a tree and asks if it’s suicide or the new art
Vincent says let the people believe that tragic ending
it’s a dramatic final brushstroke to my life even if untrue
but I love the blackbirds and my wheat fields and blue irises
way too much to spill my guts on them cadmium red maybe
my left ear lobe maybe but never my guts
where’s de Kooning anyhow he yells the *******
borrowed my paintbrush and never returned it
now I’ll have to paint with the tongue of Gauguin’s old shoe
Caravaggio floats by face up caressed by the wet palms of the weeping lilies
he’s burning up with fever delirious screaming
where’s my ship where’s my ship
they’re all on the ship my paintings
my paintings will redeem me the Pope knows
I only killed one man
Monet strokes his beard like Moses Rembrandt
says it happens to all of us even our wives and
mistresses perhaps it’s the lead in our *****
it’s not suicide it’s not homicide it’s the madness of living too much
Rothko appears, a translucent ghost inside a mist salving his slashed wrist
with Monet’s pond water Mark washing washing
the healing water the Giverny water dancing with pran the giver of life
that’s what Monet was painting at the end
using the palette from the other side
pran transmitted through the wailing
of the waterlilies the siren’s song
that lures artists to their death
and then washes them clean for the next go
to pick up where they left off, alone
with his whiskey bottle Jackson ******* hurls paint clots
at Rembrandt’s Still Life with Peacocks
those two dead peacocks they’re all dead peacocks
floating belly up under Monet’s footbridge
all the color gone from their plumage
drink the water Jackson or better yet
let Cezanne rip out your diseased liver
and wrap it carefully in a weeping waterlily
and float it out into the middle of the pond
where the forgiving moonlight and the mermaids
and Monet’s eyes now dim with cataracts
can help it filter out the poison of living
too much and then you too Jackson
will make painterly love to Saskia and she will
daub your diseased body in Titian’s blue
and her husband’s gold and Vincent’s sunflower yellows
and send you back into the world
where you will continue to splash us all  
as we lie flat on the ground hands and legs intertwined
our faces and bodies your canvas more willing than ever
Jackson, you’ll turn us into a unified field of smashed hues not just from here but from where you stand one foot on the other side
get us all raging drunk Jackson in that myth you longed for
splatter us in the tinted mess of the mystery you raged at
and had to settle for drunken oblivion instead
drink deeply the mystic-hued water of Giverny
Vincent and Paul and Mark and Jackson
and when you come back
spit it out on our parched souls

Even though your funeral was in the summer,
It felt like autumn the way the tears
Hung off Aunt Shelley's jawbone like cold raindrops
On the eaves of the old porch,
The way Grandpa's eyes were too red and wet and
A thousand years away,
The way Dad's sorrow poured out of folded arms and tight lips,
Soft like worn leather,
The way it rained too lightly to add any cliché dreariness.
I just couldn't think of that red granite box as you, even though I
Knew
It was the soft gray remains of your body.
Death is not like winter, cold and harsh
Death is autumn, life draining from bodies,
Life drip-dripping from stuttering lips and
Once-strong grips
Death is watching summers of laughter and hugs fade to
Hospital rooms and rain-grey skin and
Slow sad songs like wind in red-brown, dead-brown leaves
And feeling a slow, quiet loneliness invade your veins.
Your death was not cold, impersonal sterile white; it was the
Aching melancholy melody of removing
One shade of green
From a palette, not noticed in the painting at large
But felt  keenly in the way the artist's hand no longer
Cues that brushstroke.
Watching you die was watching all the green leach out of the leaves
And turn them briefly, painfully on fire,
Standing in a field of emerald grass and feeling it
Crinkle and turn yellow-orchre under cold fingers
Collapsing into mud.
Watching Death from the outside is the single
Most painful part of your painless process.
When you took your last breath, your features were a
Picture-perfect memory of peace, even as my face was a
Mask of confusion, my chest heaving with stale hospital air
The way yours would never again.
I wanted to run outside and imagine all the trees turning red-gold
In your honor, mimicking your final
Blaze of glory in that last smile.
Autumn came early that year, though no trees
Turned
Til October.
Even in the middle of spring I can smell the
Rain-woods-wind-wine scent of your autumn soul
And it makes me smile.