I paint the night, the ******* gloss;
Colouring the grass and their floss;
Keeping watch o'er the careful storm;
The air of the night is clear and warm.

I sketch again, the reddened corpse;
To colour it black, on purpose;
Laid dead in a battered light;
The awful course of his smug fright.

I pat again the pouring rain;
Hiding the hideous battle scene;
And yellow for the beaming sands;
The soft canvas, the howling wind.

I touch the graying lithe flowers;
Pictured wet by unheard showers;
And so their drizzles hath softened;
Leaving the slaughtered stones fastened.

Who says I'll hide my greasy face;
The painter that hath done his best;
I hath not the tears of a beast--
I hath found my ill soul, at least;

Who says I eat flowing water;
For rivers can be disobedient;
For greenness can keep a hound
On the sunburnt higher grounds.

Who says turpentine is a rose;
For 'tis but shorter than a prose;
And whose leaves can be shaky;
To the wind that once set me free.

Who says that love shall cure, and mess
With my boisterous, dainty rest;
Who says they hath a soul, this beast
That unites souls on the rose's feast.

Who says the grass hath sought much growth
When it hath but fainted three times;
Under the hot sun, grown rainbows
More than they would be pleased to show.

And who says I shall paint with love;
Love be ease, but a curse to me;
A sordid spell I shan't welcome
The erased song I shan't become.

And who says I ought yet to freeze;
To be foolish, and to be told
To be free like a lazy breeze
I hath my own truth to behold;

And who says I shall cut my skin
To entrance them, and to be seen
For what a love may falsely mean;
What hath an insincere dream been?

And who says I shall paint lithe lies
To further stretch my long night skies;
That I paint with enhanced delight
In a demure beige, sweet daylight;

And who says I shall be with thee
That I can fake ponderous lights;
For the mornings are not in me;
Neither are their hours, nor green light.

And who says I shall not be free;
For freedom too is not idyll;
For normal is not what I see;
For common is not what I feel.