Canvases

Have you ever breathed life In to a few letters, So artfully They jumped off The paper? Imagine all the scores, And leagues, And unfathomable Multitudes- A plethora of pages That stand on top Of the shoulders of giants That stand on top of the shelves Of library veins and cells, Cases of bodies of works; Caskets revealing cadavers... Suddenly brimming with vitality so forthright And bold- audacious- that there's no hope Of turning a blind eye to the spectacle! Painting canvases of dancing words, Sailboating away to secure treasure X-marked in your conscience With the ambitions Of pirates To capture vessels Of pure Spanish silver- I analogize to the seizing Of your attentions, Oh-so precious time- And lay siege to Bastions built on Slumber soil That nary a man Tills for produce, Nor harvests And cultivates Or toils for Such precious gold. Such illustrations crafted well With the romances of yester-years In their flowing blood, Their ink runs off and bleeds Sweet silence in the night sky (Something few are akin to) And swells in the fibers So saturated That their meaning rots through And soaks into- embedding The once raw wood on the table With manifest intent, And spreads and smears And smudges and sullies One single scrawl Until only the raw truth remains- For designs and fancies and Masks lied within the Polite first bow that the script took Will all disappear with A single swipe of the dragging hand. Leaving solitary honest penmanship. Birthing earnest poetry. And who was the progenitor To prodigal pieces running amok The placid and unaroused, aloof brain? And who was the artisan That molded the cast Their children so dutifully settled in? And who was the forger Of all these little tin soldiers Waging war against the contemporary? It was I, With a simple canvas, Pursuing the dream of Creation and Oblivion and Permanence and Inconstancy, That struck up These monuments and pillars. That I should build myself A garden of marble statues, Of past relics and new impressions For all to see. It was I. The latter: Why.