Deep into the forest, where none
but paws seem to wander, water
cascades over rocks, connecting
two streams. Heard from a distance,
it howls as crashing bubbles form
and fade under the weight. No
rubber boots displace this current,
and they never will. Still,
fur-covered faces scamper all about
as bliss is carried through the trees
by whispering wind.

I sit high on my Mount Olympus,
a chair from Staples with an Executive
appearance (so the box said). I'm faced
with a vacant canvas, and the knowledge
that one day,                                                
I won't have time to fill it.
1A
I decide then to fill it with whatever
comes to mind. Stars sparkle from my
fingertips after painting the whole thing
mostly black. I place them in shapes
that could be confused for a belt, a warrior,
a goat, or a saucepan to those without
vision. I pause, placing large reptiles
on a green and blue dot that floats
around one of the smaller stars. It entertains
me for a short while, but I decide to
start anew with a smaller, weaker, but
smarter animal.                        
And then I observe.
I watch as first they stand upright,
their distant relatives still using sticks
to catch ants in their homes.                
They spark stones using friction, and
I'm delighted while feeling my first tinge
of fear, for I sprinkled my own intellect in them
like stars on a black canvas.

They thrive, expanding out in every direction
until they share air, exhaling while others
breathe in their exhaust.

I watch as they cut all the greens, take
clean and cover it with cement. They burn
the core, slowly, to power machines that
take them anywhere. They fight; oh how
they fight.
        The core dissipates and they fight over
it, and they fight over me and I don't
understand. All their ideas are the same,
other than those who assume that they
are in my favour . . . Location, as I've
grown to see, impacts culture; it can not create
hate.
They look to me, pray to me,
and I can hardly intervene. A new
world, it seems, is all that I could do . . .

1B
I think of my dad, who left a thousand
jokes yet to be told. Before I paint or print,
I think and think and nothing comes.
Then I paint the sky with tiny points
of white, wasting no more time on thinking.
A scene opens up before me, and it
consumes everything
that I am, or that I ever will be.

I paint my own light into the dark
abyss, bliss kissing my cheeks as
my working wrist grows weak.
I write, if only to last a second
longer than my body. I write
to continue (to matter).