If i’d let you do me damage
i’d disguise my blood as paint
in a portrait I’d do of you
crimson with an ochre taint.

It’d be hung on a wall
that’d fall with the wind
aside an aged tree,
solemnly, sparsely limbed.

The rubble and soil
would finish the brawl,
for my fists would be
scathed by nightfall.

For your eyes
i’d mistake two plumbs.
The unknown is always shadowed
by a foliage blessed by it’s sons.

If I’d let you do me damage,
turn me over to abstraction,
it’d end more sullen than stone.
More than the moon waxen.