life is a canvas splattered with paint
the artist moves swiftly while lacking constraint
brushes drag slowly leaving their marks
over and under they draw their smooth arcs
and like these arcs which go up and go down
our everyday lives travel circles around
the tracks of the coaster which land at the top
and fall to the bottom in one sudden drop
like a drop of acrylic on the canvas below
which lands on the surface and stars in the show

I'm making a
Mental list.

It includes high-pitched noises
And dried up creek beds
A few gallons of orange juice
And an empty tube of toothpaste.

I'm bold enough to add some
Paper bags and that time in an
August rainstorm with you and
The moon when it's blood red.

Recently it's acquired a canister of
Powdered sugar, a slew of people I
Was too afraid to talk to and several
More who I wasn't.

The receptionist I smile at and
An empty bench where I sometimes sit
And the feeling of hands covered in
Acrylic paint.

I'm making a
Mental list.

But now I'm moving it
To paper, a list
Of things I never
Write poetry about.

My dearest artist
These worlds you create
So full of wonder and awe
So lonely yet full of life
There are no words
And never a worry

Could you paint me away
Far away from this place?
In a place where I belong
With song birds singing
Where autumn never ends
The river flowing beside me
Cant you paint me away.

When it's dark in the city,
I like to take off my glasses so that everything blurs together
And I can't tell where the lines start and end.

It's like the world becomes a painting,
One with globs of oil coming off the canvas
And you can make it look like anything you want it to be. 


And if I twist my neck around, 
I can see everything that I can imagine.
Like one where someone is in love with me and if I don't want blood under my tongue, 
There doesn't have to be.

One where I can walk surely and I don't have to take off my glasses to feel safe.


I can touch the halos around the street lamps with my fingertips because of the peaks of paint and I can sleep at night because of the dark sky. 
Sometimes you are there and sometimes I am alone and the same painting can mean a million things.

A million beautiful things if I let it.

Paint me a way home
I no longer want to be alone.

Use your yellow paint
And engulf me,
Into a beautiful world
Without any restraint.

That blue can be used
As the new sea,
Full of life
and full of being.

I will no longer be afraid
Of the wideness of the sea.
I will be comforted by the brushstrokes
Of the new beginning.

Paint me a home
White, with no mistakes.
No smudges
No gray.

Most importantly
Will you paint me?
With no mistakes, no smudges
A pair of new eyes
as blue as the sea.
Paint me and my being.
Make me feel yellow.
Make me happy.

I don’t want to feel lonely.
I want to be painted lovely.

we're lead claiming to be paint.

i never had the right.
i never saw black as all of the colors at once,
or as the absence of any,
i just allowed retinas to dance and be still without ever taking any of it in.

monochrome rhymes with monotone but no apartment or pasture has ever been warm enough to call home,
at least for hollow bones and eyes constantly shifting from a gregarious green to a more genuine grey.

no one ever hears the crickets, even when the floodgates are open or we're searching for that perfect shade to transform the canvas.

you were a monkey with a paint brush,
a brief rush of lust disguised as beauty and anything else that retinas could convince themselves to be mindful of.

chipping paint on the garage will remain and any lungs in proximity will continue to breathe in the dead crickets.

i don't have the right and we'll never get it right.