Sun slits in through slats
of kitchen window blinds
and she is alone.

The art major is cooking
spaghetti,
pretending her thrifted T-shirt
bearing a cotton copy
of Campbell's Soup Cans
is not stained with tears and blood.
Oh, but that's hysterics and
hyperbole;
art has a tendency of making its worshippers
melodramatic...no?
The blood is only tomato sauce
and the tears...
well, what are tears but
water and salt?
After all, dramatizing the
mundane is just one awkward shade
of artistic temperament.
Visualizing life through
a heavy silk screen.

The art major sighs and
stirs.
The spaghetti is redder and
redder as she cooks.
Just as
her paintings bleed more blood
as she dangles a brush over them -
the teary-eyed watercolours.

The art major has decided
that drawing out extremities
of colour
might transform
her own life into
a pop of a Warhol painting.

The art major sighs and
stirs.

She thinks, tries to
think
in technicolour.
Today's thought-pencilled thesis
concludes (like a brush stroke of uncertain finality) that
love is the red of tomato soup cans.
Anger is the boil, passion is
the gulp,
danger, caution, warning,
the hot breaths, fleeting warmths,
the burn and sweet and tang.
She looks down at the
scarlet of
Warhol's soup cans,
blooming in worn out cotton
on her chest.

It might as well be blood, she
thinks.
It is,
it is,
it is.
Blood red love -
tomato soup cans.

Sun sets in slits
through kitchen window blinds
and she is still alone.

The art major sighs and
stirs.
The spaghetti is ready.

I tried to scrub your name
out of my head,
but all I got was skin and soap
under my nails.

We seem to believe
That someone's problems
Are dark drops in clear water
Can't see through, too solid

We can’t separate
The drops from the water
The dark from the clear
The people from their problems

Like they’re one in the same
And all they’ll ever be
We’ve let problems become
Someones identity

But a rose is not a thorn
And a cactus, not a needle

They are people with problems

and not problem people.

I am the Poet, hear my siren’s song
My woven whispers ****** ways and words
Mesmerizing, you will feel you belong
Be part of an inner circle and be heard

Write with me, no lines will be false or blurred
Together we will create and be strong
There’s no need for pleasure to be deferred
I am the Poet, hear my siren’s song

I have been sad and alone way too long
Belonging together is most preferred
Creating brings joy, won’t you come along?
My woven whispers ****** ways and words

Take a chance and your senses will be stirred
Part of our circle, not lost in the throng
We are more together, grace is conferred
Mesmerizing, you will feel you belong

All ideas are welcomed, no thought is wrong
Just know this; your spirit won’t be interred
May our venture be successful and long
Be part of an inner circle and be heard
I am the Poet

krs
July 21, 2015

Why do poets and photographers love fleeting things?
Angled shafts of sunlight piercing a mass
of clouds. A rainbow flashing from dragonfly wings.
Water drops beading like shards of glass.

The fluttering shape of a sycamore’s shade.
The sun sinking into its reflection
In a purple bay.  Smoke’s shadow. The rayed
Curve of a finger reaching for perfection.

Whatever churns, bursts, rocks, flies,
Foams, flickers, roils, evades
In pigments of impermanent dyes
We try to fix before it fades

Once I mourned the endless dying  
Of here and now, the present always past
Elegized each moment, sighing
Beauty is loss and can never last.

But now I think I had it wrong.  In fact
(I learned this from an artist’s eye)
Fleeting beauty reappears faster than we react,
At the speed of a daydream flashing by.

All around, light coalesces into form,
Form explodes into light,
And we live lavishly inside this storm
If we can learn to see it right.

Beauty multiplies, tapering, swelling:
Reshaping, reforming, now familiar, now strange.
This gaudy blur in which we’re dwelling
Is the permanence of change.

I like whites - clean and crisp. White shirts and white sheets. White mugs and warm milk and white winter rains. But if you were coffee, I'd spill you over every white and love every stain.

I like organized - neat and nice. Made bed and matching blankets. Tidy shelves and closet. But if in my room you're the clutter, I don't think I'd ever fix it.

I like stories and poems, novels that get me hooked. I like plots with twisted endings, and my heart being took. But if you were a word in a chapter, I'd rather read you forever - over and over - than finish the book.