poem 13 of a poem a day for 2012

scavenging desolation at the corner of awake and divine


seems as if every skin
of mine can enter sin
but not get all the way in
until I know why
the animals have left us art

driving
straight home after work
again,reading books
meant to inspire me
to gain knowledge
or at least an annoying
trivial factuality

drawing,
into it all
window dressing
is a madness
for what words can do
without every rule
being followed at once

singing,
what rises
in silence to roar
has art been lost
to the sounds
the animals make?

sculpting,
trying to feel
what I have
forgotten that
spills beauty
in such a wide angle lens
that only a few times
in the microcosmically
laser-focused feedbag
modernity can I finger
past the noose slip

painting,
leaves of why
as an artist
I must be mad
because
I know
I need words
I need colors
I need brush-strokes
I need textures
and choral yokes
broken free
to know why
I am still wild inside
my humanity
why I am
still able
to see
and feel
and touch
and smell
and taste
as an animal does
painting another Mona Lisa
in its sleepy dreams
of bloody lambs
again

EJR (c)