51. pain things

 

the paint is not a picture | paint is pigment

it makes is versions of itself

we see through glassine | indistinct

alienating details | my eyes cannot smell

the color of eucalyptus | in my shower

when steam releases | its scent into my nostrils

the opossum smells it | from the side of the road

its two eyes reflecting | your two headlights

back into your two eyes | binding you together

too warm and humid now | for comfort

maybe too warm to paint | unless you paint

the opening of winter | not the bare trees

not the russet color the world takes on then

but | how winter feels | after a summer or

how you perceive it | just before onset of spring

you must paint how winter invades | your body

overtakes your thoughts | keeps you from

remembering | whatever isn’t winter around you

avoid painting what you see | paint as if you

were blind | but could see what you had made

 

the brush is not your finger | but your eye

it shows you | what to see | how to see it

your painting of winter | could be light blue

with streaks of striating white | in bumps and

bulges | if you paint it carefully

we might be able to smell | winter after a few

days of drying | if you set the paint down right

anyone should be able to read | the words

you imagined onto the canvas | text you only

pretended to paint down | but which still radiates

out of the drying paint | I can read your winter

right now | though you have yet to paint it

I can feel the first shivers | as the wind starts

slipping under the door jamb | through

the windows | I can hear a sudden gust

against the house | how it pushes

your car | just a little | sideways

as you drive | while the sun shifts

into twilight | I can taste the flakes of

snow | in this tiny flurry surrounding me

 

you cannot paint a painting | but you can

feel one growing | inside you | and you

can let it grow | big enough to enter the world

you might conceive the painting | but only

slightly as much | as it conceives | you

appearing | as a surprise your fingers cannot

repel the approach of | though the paint

erupts from your hand | spread from

the center of you | to the canvas | invading

every exposed inch | of canvas

transforming imagination | into the made

rendering summer | temporarily | obsolete

as the seasons do not change | but fail to

make any sense | as you stretch the canvas

not to tauten it | but to make it just a

tiny little bit bigger | to hold a bit more of

the winter that has invaded your head

before you turn the canvas over | begin

to paint on the back of it | to increase its

resonance | to smell the pine board square