On My Poetry

I am a child playing with finger-paints,

plopping blobs of multi-colored paint,

which runs and clumps onto the canvas,

making my attempts,

to depict what I see and feel,

into murky shadows of a world too crudely rendered.

Incomprehensible swirls,

of my chubby little hands,

struggling,

with mindless tenacity,

to paint,

blurry, evanescent, unrecognizable details,

as senseless as the death throes,

of a writhing salamander,

half drowned in a paint can by a sadistic child,

and thrown onto a canvas,

to create art,

through the stains of its death throes,

A child,

trapped,

in a middle-aged body,

staining with artless hands,

unrecognizable forms,

in a pointless effort,

to render,

some meaning,

on the canvas,

of his life.

 

From Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems (C) 2011 Victor D. Lopez