8/17/18 - Life offers many expressions of emotion. The simplest, and sometimes the most profound, are often missed. (Image by Brodsky)




Buried Emotions


My layered burials started off on an easel
at a seaside beach of sand castle dreams,
where memories began as hesitant strokes,
and growing up seemed a fantasy.

There was the time when I was painted
with a circus ring where red nosed clowns
came from a miniscule car,
depicting children and adults roaring with laughter.

Yet…

Like for so many artists,
I wasn’t delivering the message,
his purpose,
his passion,
always short of worthy acknowledgment.

But today…

Today, I’m a big-time gesso-layered landscape,
barren of all those spent emotions before now,
save the straying kite strategically placed just right of center,
while a steadfast rock waits patiently,
for patrons, students, curators
and critics alike to take a look,
see it,
get it.

So here we are.
Me up on the wall.
You there sitting beside the man with dark glasses,
your haunches getting numb,
your head tilting left and right,
ears pricked skyward with Plato-like attention,
while your master sits pensively
on the gallery bench,
his optics of perception in darkness,
his attentive focus listening for the images
only he can conjure up.

I wonder if the weeping
of so many buried emotions is somehow heard,
those painted layers of
cast-aside dreams unfulfilled,
dashed hopes left homeless,
layered feelings buried deep,
never to see the light.

Hopefully, my life as an overused canvas will be understood,
for gravity is starting to take over,
there’s only so much a body can carry, you know?
Tenacity is succumbing to the heavy load,
this framed rack of dreams stretched, severed,
and even a few fulfilled is about done.

Sadly, all life knows time disappears fast,
like the museum’s closing time coming up.

The seeing-eye dog keeps tilting his head,
just staring at me,
occasionally licking the hand of his charge
in dark glasses.

Perception.

So personal.