Watercolors


Glorious golden embers
Glowing and gleaming
Glistening in the blowing wind
Riding cool autumn breezes
Embarking on a journey’s end
A moment of truth revealed
A kaleidoscope of color
Meticulously painted and perfected
Radiantly reflected
On the canvas in my heart
Where you came
Painting an offering of acceptance
Friendship
Grace and love
Leaving heart prints
With every brush stroke
Lasting forever
But the moment
Lasting only a season
And God with all His reason
Blurs the view
While clouds of confusion
Gather on the horizon
The watercolors all run together
As the rain rolls down my cheeks…

©~Travis
10.15.08

Just as the colors of Summer
  Fade into gentle shades of
Nighttime cerulean and smoke,
  The velveteen sky whispers...

A restless secret echoing across
  Silent meadows, heavy with shadows
That bleed shrouded consciousness
  Into the museum of my thoughts.

Each canvas is made of my skin,
  Drawn tight to a bone structure of
A paradoxical girl who's fingertips
  Emit a light...

A strong light which used to flow
  Like a river over midnight tears
And take me beyond to the realm
  Of sensation.

But now, I fall weak before the canvas
  Into a slumber as deep as time.

Billowing cloudbursts of paint in hues
  Of sorrow white and southern red
Rain upon my resting body
  On the floor.

The ghost of my conscience comes
  To cover me with a quilt patched
In foggy memories, incidentally
  Soaked in honey whiskey...

Just as the ghost covers me,
  It softly focuses on lips and breathes
"The empirical nature of your thought
  Rhymes with sensational control."

Though I venture in and out of
  Dreamscapes unknown,
I still hear the sound of the
  Wraith in my mind...

Like the somaticism of a beckoning
  And lonesome mockingbird calling
In the nightside fields of
  What I suppose is peace.

My chest becomes burdened with a sigh,
  A decadent and pure intoxication
Of the abstraction of
  Reality...

Seven miles above a three inch
  Reality.

The Watercolors flood the ever deepening
  Hallow of the museum of thoughts,
Drowning the corridors of my mind with
  Her liquefied heart.

I have completely lost a piece
  Of myself in her forever...

And light [watercolors] flowed from her tender fingertips.

I woke up this morning still covered in watercolors,
but I wish it was your sent
not paint which covered my skin.
as the colors splash across the page
washed and faded
I can't forget your vibrancy
with out you so far
everything is watercolor
suggested hues
waiting on a dry brush
to fill them in
and make them glow
yes there is still beauty in the brush strokes
still the eb and flow and nuance
but the moments that shine the brightest
are with you
I need you
you are acrylics to my watercolors

She wished to paint with watercolors
because they bled all over the paper
Like her emotions bled all out of her wrists
but never out of her mouth

She wished there was a way to be beautiful
and still tell the truth of her messy, wild life

She was reaching for her razor blade
When the watercolors called to her
There is a better way
There is an easier way than this, they whispered
She wanted to believe it
but didn't know if it was worth the risk
didn't want to look weak

There was no pain involved in this new way
Only beauty bleeding from her heart
Instead of her skin
Was it worth it?
to leave paint stains rather than scars on her arms

its by growing through means
living by moderate extremes
anything to pass by that perluded meaning
drafted hung by my neck from the ceiling
intoxicated by your words
things phrases and voices, before you I have never heard

have you ever been inside fire before
scorned even when I open my eyes
to something called a new day
days are just blended into together
like watercolors
overlaping each other
sometime complimenting one another
and sometimes end up in a unorganized mess
yet we call it beautiful
but every painting has its own meaning
those that dont are never painted

~


There, beneath the rubble,
the ash and the debris,
you’ll find a faint image
looking something like me

As I too stand, peering into the pile
wondering, trying to make
some sense of the torment,
though this pain is imaginary…

for I have strode this wasteland,
walked these barbed wire foot paths
many times in the past
and what once was pain,
is now what I am

and the silhouette of what is seen
in a visionary echo of long ago tears,
repeating through thorn crested decisions
and a true lack of self confidence,

dances on the acidic breezes
that engulf my heart
and paint my frown
in weeping watercolors of my forgotten dreams

My life was stuck in greyscale
Until you came along
With beautiful watercolors.
You painted the skies
With amethyst and sapphire
With coral and azure.
You painted the autumn trees,
With amber and titian
With hazel and maroon.
You flooded the dark oceans
With turquoise and navy.
You sprinkled the grey mountains
With shimmers of flaxen sunlight.
My entire life exploded
Into an exquisite rainbow.

And then you left.
And the radiant world
You had painted for me
Slowly faded
Back into anaemic dust and gloom.

You are carlights through white window shades,
You’re moonlight on the shore.
You are sun before rain had a chance to fade,
You’re bare feet at ocean’s floor.

Your voice echos atop the hollow waves
that we sleep to every night.
Your laugh is your heavy heart being saved,
all silver shadows fighting golden candles’ light.

I am grays and blues and evergreens,
I’m early sunlight reflected in clear eyes.
I am ever changing and ever seen,
I am pastels trapped inside thick black smoky ties.

We are a single whispered chord, retuned and redefined,
We are coastal byways and yellow dotted swerving lines.
We are deep navy skies inhaled by wintry crystal night,
We are watercolors cooled by the sea then cast in firelight.

Our fingers brushed in the gallery opening
not so long ago,
we were in a room full of art,
which only made me crave you more.

It reminded me of your hands,
finger-painting like a child using watercolors
onto my blank canvased soul filling in
every part of me that was missing colors.

Now, everything is in black and white.
When our fingers lightly brushed again,
I felt the flood of rainbows and stars rush back to me
before disappearing behind me, following you away.

Yesterday was your birthday

All day, my hands weighed me down

With the itch to text you to wish you a good day
With the need to grip a steering wheel, navigating me to your house
With the idleness feeling sinful as I wasn’t baking you confetti cake
With the feeling of being misplaced against anything that wasn’t your skin

To keep my hands busy I piled memory into a grinder
And
Ground
Ground
Ground

Turned the parts as if I was winding up a music box
Because this sound was full
In comparison to
The pit of my stomach that was still waiting to
Share your birthday cupcakes with you

When the flashbacks filtered into my brain
The high was pulled lower still
By the weight of my hands
So that all I could do was cross them
And pray a prayer worth all of the birthday gifts I’ve ever given

“Please, God, on this day make him forget himself.

Please, God, let him find a sweet tooth for things other than the melancholic poison he puts in his coffee

Please, God, let him not remember the time when he broke open too wide and let me slip out of him

Please, God, allow him to feel something, on this birthday, even if it’s just his birthday candle blisters

Please, God, give him his heart back, as it is buried in the past that I was never gifted to know

Please, God, let me not weigh him down with a guilt seed that would root him to a chapter in his life that he wishes he could rewrite

Please, God, let me stop dreaming of him.
I know what it means when I dream of someone.
I know it’s your way of wordlessly telling me I’m being thought of.
Do not let him think of me.


Please, God, fill the parts of him that his worker’s hands have carved out of himself so cleanly.

Visit the wounds that sit in his posture
Will his veins to carry his soul back to his heart

Remind him that his sadness is his own special brew
That he continues to sip at his leisure

Help him understand that feeling lonely
Comes from his own brain that remembers isolation better than love

Please, God, give him
A better year.
A good year.
A year when his time won’t be stolen by someone so insignificant
That he has to translate her words into the language of gibberish,
Until they mean nothing at all anymore.

Please, let him find someone.
Please, let that person captivate him.
Please, let that person know him.
Please, let that person sit in bed with him and feel their good fortune in their bones.
Please, let that person see the moon in his fingertips and realize that they can control the tides, if he wants them too.
Please, let him smile at this person, in ways that would be ugly in pictures, but beautiful in my memory.

Please, God, let that person be HIM.

Please, God, if you won’t cut the ribbon to the start of his new life, at least give him the scissors.

He will say “No, Thank you.”
He will say he does not need your help, because he knows the power of his paint brush,
and that he is too busy washing color out of his brushes to take hold of the harsh metal,
And then he will make confetti of your offer.
He will shred every pleasant thought that comes his way.
He will cut himself open and gaze at every beautiful thing, insisting he sees the wonder.
He will not see the wonder.
He will say he understands the things that live inside himself.
But he will turn their volume down
And tune deeply into the metallic music of sorrowful hollowness
He will go to extreme efforts to ignore the starting line that sits just outside of his comfort zone.

But, God, Please,
Send the trees to trip him
Make the animals chase him
Let him
Throw tantrums that are disguised as the silent treatment

But wrap him up in his ribbon, so that the only way he can move
Is forward.
Remind him that the scissors are always in his hand,
And he needs to learn that
They need not destroy.

Make the clouds rain on his new life,
And remind him that he has a knack for watercolors.

Lure him with oils
Guide him with spraypaint

This Year, show him the paint that
Will reteach color to him.

This year, let him understand that colors are bright,
But not the enemy.

Let him not fear red from the times that he bled,
Let him not cast away yellow, because the sun got in his eyes,
Let him not hate blue, because he almost drowned.

Build in him a reservoir for happiness, that could sustain him through this life that has already been too tragic.

God, on his birthday, please indulge these heavy hands so that they may not cross the fingers for his return,

Because God, it was not I who was born today,
And it was not me who was stiffed on birthday cake.

And though this prayer is selfish,
It is the only thing I can give him,
That he cannot refuse.”

And as I looked down to see my clasped hands, I couldn’t help remember
When one of them was yours.

And for my final birthday wish to you ,
I hoped that only your sleep
Could be relieved of the white knuckle tensions of restlessness

So that you may sleep, and know the peace that I felt,
When I slept next to you.



Happy Birthday,
I miss you.
Happy Birthday,
I’m sorry.
Happy Birthday,
This is selfish,
But Happy Birthday,
So were you.

We both created
such a beautiful mess.
We were like a watercolor painting,
shades of reds and blues
and purples and greens
splattered on a blank canvas.