when van gogh painted starry night, people called him crazy because his paintings weren't "real" enough, they were "childish" and "messy". i find that all so strange as i look into the sky and see vincent's brush strokes swirling around the stars. they seem to move with the wind, but even mother nature couldn't take credit for something so beautiful.

and i think of you every crescent moon, when the mountainous clouds are coloured gold; their backdrop looks more like the ocean than the sky.

i read somewhere once that poets are too idealistic, too unaware of reality, their heads so far up in the clouds too see that poetry is not a profession. that was in response to my favourite slam poem-- and i bet the view is so much better up there.

lately i've been seeing you as poems instead of just my muse and often when i speak of you computer-screen critics come out of hiding and tell me my metaphors are crazy and that my hopeful words are idealistic and that i can't base my future around you and to get my head out of the clouds, but i like the world so much better from up here. i realize now that maybe everyone has it backwards. maybe they are so caught up in their self-dug holes to see his brush strokes at night, maybe theyre not looking. they are so afraid to see the sky a different way than how it has been painted for them their whole lives.

the other day i read that starry night was painted by van gogh in an asylum in his last year on this starry earth and that those glittering masses were the view from his window.

i'm not sure how clear things were to him at that time but those stars live on with their little orbs of light; illuminating my thoughts about you, and love, and the future with such clarity. i can only hope my words someday mean as much to someone as that cosmic portrait does to me.

and i hope that one night when you look up at the sky you will see my brushstrokes and think of me.