Tools

The studio is never neat.

Brushes lie on the table, stained
by years of use.
There is paper, thick
and heavy, textured
to hold the color.
Paintings litter the floor.
Small tubes of paint
lie one on the other
in wooden boxes.
A cacophony of photographs,
note cards,
magazines and art,
an explosion of ideas,
hopes and madness,

Your desk is no better,
piled high with keyboards
and paper, post its and toys.
Pens, black, blue, red,
hi-lighters scatters the old wood desktop.
There are four books, open,
passages of poetry and science
underlined and forgotten.
There are cards from lovers and children,
small boxes from foreign lands hide
in plan sight.
Envelopes, their backs scribbled
in flirtations with the muse,
lie everywhere.

Tools, nothing more,
chisels for the marble
that is your mind,
hoping that somewhere
under the stone of pain
an angel emerges,
a messenger,
a herald of hope
who will take your hand,
and dance in the night,
Your private minuet of madness

framed,
hung on the wall,
for all to see.

About this poem

It’s odd, what we bloggers and poets do, capturing private moments and thoughts, then putting them in public in the belief that perhaps we can touch others, connect, help, do good…. do something.

Or perhaps it is just a release, a need to be heard when no one else will listen, so we send it “out there” for the universe, a private prayer, made public.

And for the record. I am a pretty neat person. Except for the places I create – my studio and my study. Those never seem to be quite put together.

Tom