The artists’ way.

If paintings could come to life

Id step into Van Gogh’s Bank of the Oise at Auvers

Perch myself atop a faded wooden boat

and  gaze at the picturesque city that delighted Gogh’s brushes

 

If a poem could carry life

Id awaken Emily Dickison’s

“Because I could not stop for death” 

To let my feet have a brush of the quivering dews 

That orchestrated a funeral in her brain

 

Maybe I would travel back 

Many and many a year ago

To the kingdom by the sea

And meet the maiden Annabel Lee

Who with Edgar Allen Poe found love

Coveted by the winged seraphs

 

Or maybe I would meet them 

Gogh, Dickinson and Poe

And seek to know how it is 

To lay down one’s life for art

 

Gogh’d reserved mental energy 7 days

For ‘La Mousme’ 

But maybe his reserves ran out

Because they heard a gunshot one afternoon 

In the picturesque town of Auvers

A shot to the head and the dutiful fingers that painted

World famous daisies

Painted his shirt with blood

If you looked a little closer 

At The Starry Night that sit atop our mantels

You would see that it is an east facing view 

Of a mind seeking escape from an asylum 

And if you read between the lines of Dickinson’s 

 thousand and eight hundred poems

You would find that death was her closest companion

But it was poor ol Poe who spent his final hours

Conversing with spectral and imaginary objects on walls

 

Because you see 

An artist to practise his art, must sacrifice his heart

Oh and more, he lay down his sanity

 

So if I could meet them

Gogh, Dickinson and Poe

 I would ask 

If they ever saw the light again 

If words and colors overtook their senses

If the passion is worth the pain

 

I would ask them 

If death will give me a name

For it seems like the artists’ way. 

 

a printed name

I’m just a printed name on a daily paper
in a small town
searching the streets
for something that you might want to read 
I spend my days on numbered notes
knowing a hungry stomach
fares better
than a hungry soul
and when I die
I will be a name on a whiteboard
wiped away when dusk descends
by the hand of a skillful YMA member
and if my family is merciful
I will be the name
In the corner of the daily Vanglaini
a year later
gone but not forgotten
It would say
So that you may glance upon my name
and remember
I once searched the streets
looking for something
you might want to hear
that i was once a printed name
on a daily paper
where another name now sits
looking for something
you might want to know.