The Artist

Abstract visions
sitting still in portrait halls
hung on walls are dreams
fleeting emotions
silent devotions
shaped in love and grief
 
My fingers tremble
as I hold the brush;
I'm a hopeless romantic
sentimentalist  
wrapped like a present-
but I'm not present
in my own nihilistic head
 
I paint death on canvas
vermillion stars on painful shades
of dancing madness
tilted on an axis shaded gray
 
A sphere of what I see
as this world
hold my shaking shoulders  
before I burst at my seams
I was a dreamer fleeing  
from the coldness of the deep
the frightening, unfeeling distance
I discovered when I searched
for a reason to be here
 
How do I take the things I feel
the things I fear, the things I loathe
and convert them into something
you'll avert your eyes from?  
 
no one will understand
the depth of terror
I felt when I went off
the beaten path
and fell from the known map
that keeps us all tethered,
bound, and distracted
from the thoughts  
that make us question...

Why
 
No one could fathom  
the weight of that terror
and now I tremble
as I dare replicate
what awaits for us
when there is nothing left