On Arrangements of Color
By B. K. Lawson
Zany flamboyance
breathes life into the dead night
and leaves its mark as a yellow
shadow on your left eye.
It is lovely, contrasting,
with the violet shade on the right
that too, emits beauty through tranquil elegance.
The lips stay stained under a dotted nose,
bitten pink and muddied at the center
of a sculpting verbalization.
The two eyes make childlike observations
to arrange sub-creations in the yolk
that will either spoil or grow wings—
hatch or be smashed from the weight
of a blood-animated world.
If brought past the shell,
do those eyes pluck the palate from the prism sky
for the great brush of the universe
among the desk of all that is?
Because they,
an atom of a single bristle,
are an atom of will
that makes its stride?
You dip blood red at the tips of your thumbs,
asking why rituals are now built upon your mind’s flow
while you press them on the peaks of your cheeks.
Are they had simply because they can be?
Are they chosen,
in the wave of reason beating upon
the rock of honesty,
refusing to be dormant?
The sun now reaches out,
offering the opportunity of time
upon its dial with a needle
to induce an act of courage.
Will you put your eye up to it?
To read the wave of life’s shadow
as your body drives the passage of spirit?
Will your face return to earth,
your eyes close, having seen some worth
so that, when the next unknown does start,
its ultimate end– an eternal art?
From The Mountains Here Are Showing Poetry Collection
