Forlorn Canvas


My layered burials started off on an easel
at a seaside beach of sandcastle 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 stealthily 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 propped up against the wall.
You there sitting and panting 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 studio 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,
coated 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 gallery’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.