There’s a moving portrait above my sink,
her cheeks are pudgy,
her skin is pink.

Her eyes are melting,
teeth fallen out,
her noose is bleeding
a river of doubt.

The portrait screams,
she cries for aid,
she tells a dead god,
that he could have stayed.

No oil,
no paint,
no canvas,
not a brush;
Instead this portrait feels and aches,
her rawness still to gush.

Yet dusk is dusk,
and by dawn it is dawn.
You may look for such a portrait,
to find that it is gone.

Not a finger nail in sight,
not a single clogged hair.
It begs but one question:
Was she ever really there?

My heart is held in the hands of people who like to break things.
Chaos is their default, and
everything is my fault.
Why do the broken always find me?

They think I am a mirror, but I am a window.
Not fractured like them, but convient and translucent.
They keep their hands firm against my cold surface and stare through me while they continue to look for something.

My mosaic is just not for them.

I see the depth of the ocean in your blue eyes,
With all its amazing secrets,
I see the beauty of the paradise on the beach of your eyelids,
Calm and peaceful,
I see salty puddles of raindrops fill the pupils of your eyes,
I hope they are of joy and not sorrow,
For I want to drown in your eyes filled only with happiness.
Open your eyes and look at me,
So I can be reborn again,
To find the secrets in your heart,
And the intentions of your soul.
Please let me be the beholder of your eyes,
And a complete portrait of your memories.

This Picture Perfect Family
Is family of contradiction.
Hands hold the frame of the Portrait;
Bitterness seethes with friction.
Repulsive as summer cockroach,
Its artwork I wish to reproach.
Faces full of fake smiles-
Cloyingly sick, I want to puke!
The portrait presents many lies.

This Picture Perfect Family,
The truth is it has been defiled!
Father fights Mother; home havoc!
Harmony crushed by clamor.
Though I may be a naive child,
This family has a vicious void.
Resentment rattles with full force;
The essence of love long destroyed;
Hatred only settled with divorce!

This Picture Perfect Family
Can only appear in my dreams.
The tone of painting I abhor;
Behind our smiles, gloominess gleams,
It does not show there is a war.
My mind screams in frustration
Like the ******’s first castration.
I wish this wretched pain to bury-
Emotions blurred by apathy!

This Picture Perfect Family
Will not exist any longer!
I wonder now what is at stake-
Foundation of love macerates.
Hands tremor in anguish anger;
The Family Portrait drops and breaks.
Glass frame shatters; heart lacerates.

Oh, let this Portrait rot in hell…
Picture Perfect Family farewell!

(c) Jo Swan

i smear oil paint across your lips.

your face, outlined in pale brown and
robin's egg blue and
yellow-green,
rests gently in negative space.

part of me hurts
when i look at this part of you,
this part i am
so familiar with,
in an unfamiliar way.

the lines of your eyes
(eyes i've gazed into a thousand times)
betray my secrets and my soul;

the whisper of your hair
is the same as the quiet brush of mine
on the tops of my bare shoulders;

i reach out to touch you,
and my fingers touch dried oils
in shades of raw umber and cadmium lemon;
my paintbrush still dangles, wet,
from my other hand.

the creased wax paper on the table
carries swatches of color,
the potential energy of
my pigment-smudged hands;
you are still unfinished.

i am still unfinished.

they paint a picture of me:
black and white and grey.
i pose for them,
so still I have forgotten how to breathe,
my lungs aching
and my head spinning.  
they paint only
the portrait they want to see
obscuring my flaws
and covering all the bits of me.
black and white and grey,
black and white and grey.
i drag my fingers
through a bright color
and smudge it across the canvas.
they want be to be
black and white and grey,
but maybe
pink was my color all along.