I keep my paintbrush with me
Wherever I may go
In case I need to cover up
So the real me doesn’t show.
I’m so afraid to show you me
Afraid of what you’ll do-
That you might laugh or say mean things;
I’m afraid I might lose you.

But if you be patient and close your eyes
I’ll strip off my paint coats real slow.
Please understand how much it hurts
To let the real me show.
Now my coats are all stripped off-
I feel naked, bare, and cold.
But if you still love me with all that you see
You are my friend, pure as gold.

I need to keep my paintbrush, though,
And hold it in my hand.
I need to keep it handy
In case someone doesn’t understand.
So please protect me, my dear friend,
And thanks for loving me true.
But, please, let me keep my paintbrush with me
Until I love me too.

A paintbrush on fire
it isn't yet done.

Paints in broad daylights
in cool cloudy darks
often relaxes down the line
when the rain pours down
and the flute is on play
it isn't yet done.

The sea at the clement eve
strives to splash over
this rainbow-kissed brush
the moon will thaw the billow
with moonlight
before the waking
sleeping beauty's eyes
and the night will pour over it,
it's full bowl eternally pitch black
only to see lighting up
zillions of stars
on the paintbrush
it isn't yet done!

Apparently that looks only kohl
the night eyes in within a colour
eternally weighed down
out of sight mass hues
looking to visualise a scoop
paints yet one more first light.
Full of colours the paintbrush
it isn’t yet done!

Hidden within the earthy depth
only emerges with time
only dances in tangent
now slips out with the butterflies.  
Now the nightingales singing aloud!

One has spoken out, one blew
a kiss out off the dark seed.
Ah, what then broke through?
Up from the sky the blue-nymph  
dropped down on the scene!
One that hid blurring that's image
on the mirror is that now been seen?

Pouring rain singing down to primulas
paints it with all the colours of the wind
now the Spring picked up her paintbrush.

Rain some colour blow a kiss of the flower
paint it out of the mirror!

twirling sweeping circle-strokes of a paintbrush
on a color-soaked canvas
and humming softly in the
quiet
of the room
and the
quiet
of the creating
and thinking as a dip into the
swirl of color on a rainbow pallet,
the point of the brush into a dab of
yellow-green and blue
red at the corners and a swirl of
purple
and drifting across
already paint-curled surface giving
life to the lifeless and
color
depth
meaning
to something simple
and so, so complex.
studying, softly, with
open-swirled mind
dizzied with the colors and the
unspoken and unspeakable
meanings they have and they hold
you.
sighing and shifting, glancing
from one painting to the next
to your own and
spreading colors like a waterstain
beautiful and unstoppable, this
madness
this
abandonment
this
knowing of the world in a point-tipped paintbrush
this
holding of the world in your paint-stained hands.

The sun is with the paintbrush
ambling down the river blue.
See, your eyes are the mirror
in between the earth and sky duo.

Bask in the open air theatre
eye on spread out with colour.
Indulge in, with a slice of summer
you got the brightest star, the light
on your canvas, you got the clue.
Now draw your way through
art yours in between the two!

The woman makes a house the home
and fills the man's horizontal spread with dreams.

Four walls can’t hold a woman inside
she is veiled but not tied!

The arch in her back hits the mark
virtually dwarfs the pyramid dwarfs the sunup.
The light at the end of the tunnel here is love.

Her inner mystery is her paintbrush.
The colour on her canvas
is a far cry from the rainbow.

It doesn’t fade nor falls on the floor
keeping it up the time lingers on.
Every star here from far and near
feels at home with a mirror!

.
A poet's heart isn't like any other...
It's the tears that trickle with radiance through words.
     It's a treasure trove that hides but longs to
     be found.
          It's a book shelved high that wants to
          be read.
               It's the freest of all birds caged but
               unbound...

A poet's heart isn't like any other...
It doesn't beat to the capable strokes of the artist.
     It doesn't pump in the most vibrant of
     colours.
          It doesn't wield a paintbrush to
          translate its thoughts.
               But it can see through the eyes of
               painters...

A poet's heart isn't like any other...
It doesn't conform to the conventional parameters of lyrics.
     It doesn't bind itself to the requirements
     of musical harmony.
          It doesn't follow the conventions of
          genres.
               But it sings its voice loud without
               restrictions of melody...

A poet's heart isn't like any other...
It's an open secret, that whispers in metaphoric codes.
     It's an exploding universe, that merges
     back into galaxies.
          It's a sought after painting, that boasts
          of unfathomable beauty.
               It's an everlasting song, that echoes
               within the poet that embodies...

She paints a pretty picture
But the story has a twist
Her paintbrush was her razor
And her canvas was her wrist

She paints a pretty picture
In a color that's blood red
And using her sharp paintbrush
She ends up finally dead

Her pretty pictures fading
Quite slowly up her arm
Blood no longer flows through her
She can no longer do her harm

Yes, she painted a pretty picture
But the story has a twist
You see, her mind was just her razor
And her heart was just her wrist

- Unknown

I am slowly learning to disregard the insatiable desire to be special. I think it began, the soft piano ballad of epiphanic freedom that danced in my head, when you mentioned that “Van Gogh was her thing” while I stood there in my overall dress, admiring his sunflowers at the art museum. And then again on South Street, while we thumbed through old records and I picked up Morrissey and you mentioned her name like it was stuck in your teeth. Each time, I felt a paintbrush on my cheeks, covering my skin in grey and fading me into a quiet, concealed background that hummed “everything you’ve ever loved has been loved before, and everything you are has already been,” on an endless loop. It echoed in your wrists that I stared at, walking (home) in the middle of the street, and I felt like a ghost moving forward in an eternal line, waiting to haunt anyone who thought I was worth it. But no one keeps my name folded in their wallet. Only girls who are able to carve their names into paintings and vinyl live in pockets and dust bunnies and bathroom mirrors. And so be it, that I am grey and humming in the background. I am forgotten Sundays and chipped fingernail polish and borrowed sheets. I’m the song you’ll get stuck in your head, but it will remind you of someone else. I am 2 in the afternoon, I am the last day of winter, I am a face on the sidewalk that won’t show up in your dreams. And I am everywhere, and I am nothing at all.

Paint your ink all over me
We’ll see how things go eventually
But I think I’m drawn to the way you breathe
To the way you see me

Pick me up like your paintbrush
Like a habit you’ve had though we just met last month
Now all I’m thinking ‘bout is us

We’ll get lost in conversation
The world’s so hurt but maybe we could change it
You know I’m drawn to the way you think
To the way we dream

Pick me up like your paintbrush
You know just how to hold me with the softest touch
And still make me feel so much

At times I heard the songs of the giants
who opted to sing for a glass of wine!

Like Omar Khayyam would sing to the grove of vine,
while singing their lullabies they wouldn’t mind,
defying the bloomer stars in the moonlights
gladly treading on the black alleys of the night.
Didn't they budge, didn't they bend to pick up  
a potion of the sea, billowing in the dark?
But they opted out, just for a glass of wine!

To paint a glimpse of that gorgeous Saqi
till now they shun, lending the sun a paintbrush,
‘cause "if only it was colourful enough,” yet the sun
paints the enduring shades of the blue yonder.
But they turned around—just for a glass of wine!

The moon hanging low over the ocean took a pause.
The earth weighed down so deep is brimful!
Every sunrise paints new, loves to shine on once more
That delved-deep earth vintage taste, cooled in age-old,  
now close by the hands breathe in, full of warm south.
Yet they opted out—just for a glass of wine!

Even the time is speechless, ask me not but why.
Still keeps an ear bent on the wall of the leaning sky.  
Nor those who pop out with an inside scoop are ever drunk.
Nor they leak out, it’s a sea off the sea or Abe-Hayath.
It ain’t that small, it is the deathless spring of elixir!