Gallery

The gallery’s walls are freshly painted,
a vibrant red to highlight the gold frames
and make the pictures stand out,

vibrant as memories of love and torture,
portraits of strangers, lost in time,
each one once loved with fire and devotion,

their lives now history, that odd mix
of truth and talle that delights
and horrifies the reader.

They are beautiful, these portraits.
memories made solid, unchanging,
far more dead

than the ones that fly in your mind,
whirling, shape changing with time,
where lovers change to dragons and back again,

where a whiff of perfume brings beauty to your minds eye,
and the acrid smell of grease brings you
to anger and cowering.

For your gallery is a madhouse,
a sanctuary, ephemeral as dawn,
as solid as the stones that cut your bare feet in the night.

About this poem

As time and life and experiences change us, they change the way we see. They change our history and truth.

Tom