Allow my letters, ink and stroke, be paint
And words and lines the image I portray.
This paper is no canvas. Its restraint
Is too encapsulating, too cliché.
If poems may be painted, then what base
Would words applied to greater meaning hold
To? Any art must this one problem face:
What form should this piece take to be retold?
But poems need no canvas, staff, or tools.
In memory they live just as they're heard.
So let my canvas be your brain. Its spools
Of woven thought infuse my every word.
Each canvas breathes a life I'll never know
Into a piece of art I cannot show.