The Farside's Face.

The wish of a painter or poet is to transport
the spirit's deep emotion by pausing
in awe at day or night's high-vaulted scene,
transposing its  beauty to dreams,

then viewing grass as more than green.

An alchemist with no interest in gold
invests time between folds,
finds in the sky thermals on which

to soar on fancy or some surreal whim
to make jasper of sea,  jade of dawn


and perceive gems hidden in flora's form.

A seer catches the farside's face
and traces that world in sentence or paint,
chimeric in nature an artist
whose eye encounters rock gives it heart,
transforms by description  
accepted mundane into mystic meaning,
adds soft to feather, colour to blur


and improves the initial by seeing further.

It is said that fine art opens doors
to show the extraordinary as but normal,
for the good poet or painter
ranks as foremost importance a felt magic


when met with empty paper or canvas.

I stop in my tracks,
          Listening

  A hollow clinking in the darkness.
In an alleyway, somewhat familiar,
Vacant and forgotten in the twilight hours
Except for the lingering cigarette smoke
And the scent of frigid, dehumanizing hate

  And a clink
Low and somehow beneath the dense, dank dark

  A sound disillusioning and honed to a fine point, like that of a blade meant to harvest death

  A clink
And another clink

                           There is a man sitting near the end of the alley
                           At the back of the throat of Hell itself
                           He has his head down
                           But through the thick black smudge of night
                           I can still see the base of a brown glass bottle tap the bottom of an upper row of teeth

He stops, and looks up at me with eyes that resemble mine a little too much for my comfort

                                    He brings the bottle down, and lowers his head, gazing at it as if for the first time
                                    Suddenly he snaps his eyes up to mine, instantly staring into the deep void of apathy that looks back.
                                    He smiles a knowing smile, and slams the bottle against his teeth.
  


              It does much more than *clink.

I'm lost
when I find myself
I'll come back for you