PAINTING RUINS

 

 

PAINTING RUINS

 

That I might smell, that I might see:

was a measure of how good my painting

would have to be before I kept or framed

it for a ready gift I did not need to wrap; 

or before I burned it with leftover oil like

the posturing madman I was more often

than not, when scented chiaroscuro was

a poem’s altered form as long stretches

of babbling babel plaguing my wordhouse.  

A dab of sienna would be mouldering

leaves, a worm’s dark squiggle in the dirt,

a shadow of a bird on rotting barn roof,

bundled twigs left askew on burnt grass:

always, always a riot of ruins on canvas.  

Why would the stump of a crumpled bell

tower find itself the fulcrum of colour

pasted, splashed, whirled into whorls

of pastel fading into a stray of gossamer

at the bastidor’s edges? How does it smell? 

Dark. Dark. Like a gaping eyeless socket,

the belfry where the bell hung is empty

save for a blackened rope whipped by wind

that must have driven the bats that have

long absconded, leaving their putrid dung.  

Dread. Dread. Like the threat of volcanic

mayhem, seen now from a distance

of quiet hues, a shadow upon a shadow,

a hurt poised by razor-edged memories

of other ruins, other woeful vanishings.  

On the tip of my ashen grey is sulphuric

stench that would always be redolent

of lacerating betrayals, carrion of love’s

cadavers forever embalmed, forever

alive, forever recent, endlessly rising

from ruins of ruins flooding my senses.

 

--- Albert B. Casuga