Framed [The Loneliness of the Soul]

“As for me. I am a watercolor. I wash off.” Anne Sexton

Knuckled strokes
Wrest wine from skies.

Seeds of light, palimpsest
On the white maps before creation,
That grew here and gave being
In remote corner of the universe
To a suggestion of God’s palette.

Hopper’s triangle of lights dissect
dust bowl__ rail road__phantom house__
Curtain-veiled silhouettes seduce the sun:
Skinned as raw deer wounds
To open and invite passing strangers.

In this theatre of drowned clowns
Every waiting moment is a circus of sorrow,
‘Two Comedians’ step into the spotlight
Before all that is known…..recedes and fades.

Somewhere, along dusty kerbs
Beside gasoline streaked streets
Lie pyres of deckchairs
Thumbprint forked by those
Who have sat and watched.

Seas brooding like an empty hospital -
Cancer-soaked blankets await ripple of limbs -
Ships seek coloured harbours
Mute to monochrome by an unstilled vision.

See the waves strain above the anchor
Eternal trench of sadness
----- towards silence
----- of oils & liquid flesh

Picasso blued up the ruelles
Feeding poverty with guts of a guitar,
Absinthe-rich bar dwellers gazing into the void
Of brutale blue that drinks and spills
Over edges of the frame,
Beyond the brink of sight.

Compact machinery of pigment muscle
Strips sinew from lungs of canvas,
Scissored breath sketches
Small worlds within worlds:
The world is everything
That is the case

(Emin)ently, folds in Tracey’s bedsheets
Hold the piss of the universe urinal:
Collect as stained stars in a petri dish.

Abuse sits north by north-west &
Mind the craters on the greyed moon.
Abuse is the heavy breathing fifty yards away
Slashed arms searching for holes to conceal herself.
Fabrics, needlework and crayons
Are just the chicken bones and feathers
Of the animal which some call man.
Sin is often smeared in blood.

The man who paints with his tongue
Tastes the tails of bone windmills, churns
Air in the land they name forever.
And a day,
His teeth rot
Take root in
Canals of abstraction.
He no longer talks, walks
Between rooms until, inevitably,
Comfort is the bedroom:
For the dreams arrive
Always they arrive.

About suffering The Old Masters always knew.
Where were you, dear gallery viewer,
When Icarus crashed from the sky?
How the suffering takes place
When someone else is just eating a burger,
Or listening to R&B on a MP3.

‘Weathered Beach House’ above the mantelpiece,
My eyes diluted by the blackened windows
& stretch of unforgiving coast.
“It will always be summer in here,” Mum chimed -
Fingering the painting
In rhythm to frost-wreathed clock.

On the day we left
‘The Beach House’ sat alone, unframed,
A gravestone for kith and kin
In kiln of broken bricks.
All vision has been inspired by love.

Scream to a sigh
Stars scar the night:
Rather talk of Van Goch ear
Than the beauty inside.
Life still is self-portrait
Inner self being painted
It’s all invented:
Case of cutlery
Vase on a window
Winter trees…..


#Thomas Jones. Häuser in Neapel (Naples) 1782