"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Poem: Pretty as a Picture (2013)

My best attempt to describe aesthetic attraction.

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Pretty as a Picture




You’re van Gogh lovely,
A living Starry Night;
Your smile curves like moonlit breeze,
And your eyes blaze with astral swirls.

Van Goghs are built for my gaze,
Made to enter the soul
Through the windows.
With coy discretion,
My eyes take you in.

But any museum of good standing
Will tell you
The cardinal rule
Of painted beauty –
Look,
But don’t touch.

And why would I?
Your roughly-swathed strokes
Would merely scrape
My unseeing fingers,
And to my tongue,
You’d taste of oil and canvas alone.

It is only in my eyes
That you twist into color
And motion and magic,
So only with my eyes
Will I take you in.

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