there’s now a tube of ochre paint with a faint crust along the edge. the dried pigment has darkened with time. widowed of the water, it is a sallow skeleton. I was eleven, back then, when the salesman swindled me of a tenth of a benjamin selling me a stellar sunset. in the basement, with a mischievous grin, I filled my palette with ochre and umber and a drop of violet. my Muse was not pleased. she'd told me to stick with words; she’d never given me permission to paint anything. the ochre touched my brush, but I met her angry eye. the air was too thick, and the canvas swirled like a carousel in my head. I quickly cleaned my palette, condemned the canvas to the cold basement, and refilled the ink in my pen, spilling it, as if that, too, was a pigment rebellion. decades later, I still keep that tube of paint on my shelf. just too tricky, just too wet, a sunset never could’ve been content with it, I convince myself. but I know the deeper truth. the mind and body always duel with each other, like bitter siblings. my mind decided to paint a sunset, but didn’t check if my body could embody it. and since it refused, and my muse knew it, she never let me touch that ochre pigment again. I wonder what that ochre could’ve become if it was sold into better hands. a daffodil’s shadow, the linen of a book, the tassel of a graduate, the sunset in a springtime forest? but now, it is dry, and will never touch a canvas. maybe my ethics are ridiculous, but I feel pretty bad for it. so, I talked it over with my Muse, and she didn’t refuse my request to write my eulogy for wasted pigment. make some art of your rebellion, she said.
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This is a beautiful poem. I can feel the heartache of dashed hope and the rebellious feel of spilled pigment.
As a non-traditional student, I relate to the " mind and body always duel with each other." The always is a curious adverb. Perhaps it is amenable to change.
An occasional poem, in the sense of found objects collecting the data for nuance. A poet decides what will be evoked in the reader, so that the debris from the tide is not the whole story, and not even the plot.
Well done, Ollie.
My word for my take-away from this one: evocation.
Thank you.