I feel fine, now
that stoical ice
grows within me
like a tangled vine
wrapping around
inside, and outside
I'm a laughing smiling
clown upside down
on my house, and
my life, you see
this frown painted
by Courbet, realistic
as Pushkin's finest
piece of poetry.

Must we only dream
   of wise kings who know
that rivers must flow
   peacefully
so a woman can sing
   her children to sleep
and fathers not weep
   holding them
in grief too heartbroken
   to rage
at the violence men bring
    in this age
that should be long left
   behind us?

The question is not when we meet our end,
but how, and how does not mean what you think.
Should it be fought, or welcomed as a friend?
To that I say, live to the very brink
however you have lived to now.  Each one
who walks though shadowed days finds their own pace;
some stride, some cringe, some stumble, others run.
What each can handle is what each will face.
If talking seems to help, then speak.  Or you
might soldier on, clad in your armored will.
No one can tell another what to do,
just what they've done, for better or for ill.
The path, if smooth or bumpy, is your own
and should you choose, you need not walk alone.

to be you is to leave a life
painted with regret in twitchy
strokes that reveal unsteadiness
in every movement of the brush

i work in certainty more often
than not, seeing the colors before
they splatter on canvass, a predetermined
image fixed in my mind's eye

my palette has changed, no longer
faded and full of sadness, now there
is a luster to the tones splayed before me,
a freedom to the movements i make

i am becoming the you, the me, my
art had always dreamed it would one
day be, i am unveiling my greatest work
yet, effortlessly beautiful in it's simplicity

sub-tropical heat
best observed from a chilled room
with chilled drink in hand

hope the thing with feathers
and I a featherless biped