Paintwritten Walls

I.

Militant files in manila folders
are shelved with the piano
and accordion binders.

The book ends and stacked
documents are scaffolding
on the shelf that is propped
against the cubicle wall.

The walls need to learn
to stand up for themselves.

He is sure of this.

The resonant hum of flicker
and fluorescence is a hymn
from the hymnals of Tesla
and a psalm from Edison.

The hum, he claims, will
careen him into carelessness.

So paint poet, paint.

The pages are
empty,

grotesque from aging,
and when he
returns
home from
a career but not a
calling he will paint
the barren pages
in

Prometheus’ and
Dante’s smudged hand-
prints;
he’ll
speak with
textures
that extend off
of the
tongue.

He’ll stain
and
smear his hand-
writing,
burn and tatter the edges
of pages

until taut
and crisp—
until
he has taught these walls
to listen and talk
back.

Paint us a poem, poet— paint.


II.

She cradles the creases in her
clothes carefully. Her charred
fingernails swipe at the canvas
in weighted strokes. She’s demure.

The charcoal on the paper
speaks for her formed concepts
and formless thoughts in streaks
and imperfections of grey foam.

She draws the figure in the picture
with arms out, legs delicately placed
under like porcelain; she always
imagined ballerinas as ceramic;
fragile… stiff.

Tonight she is a dousing cold coals—
her hands are layered in black chalk—
in paint, she’s always considered her-
self a painter; vibrant… ceramic.

So write artist, write—

Show, don’t tell
us
that paint
burns at four hundred twenty degrees
and paper
at
four hundred fifty-one;

show us
the
flammability of Pinocchio fingers
kindled by a
kiln
and ignitable hollow legs
fueled by
cooling coals.

Write artist, depict
the walls that ramble raucously
and listen
listlessly
and give them colors
from your palette
until you've
taught
these walls to look
and empathize.