i can’t paint

i can’t paint,
but the colors
that come to mind
when i think of you…

are bold and bright,
don’t run from anything,
don’t blanch for anyone,
soar on your standard,
representing your soul,
full of love,
full of life,
full of dreams fulfilled

by sparks of laughter and joy
on an ocean of brilliant stars

bringing happiness to my heart
every time i unveil you
on a canvas
painted with my words

glb /// “i can’t paint”
originally published 11/03/2018

between thought and truth

turning rhymes into prose, old thoughts and dreams
deconstructed and rebuilt, to please the only ear that
can stand to hear them after all this time alone

untangling stanzas and couplets while rearranging
shelves full of notebooks, elbow deep in words about
love and lust and betrayal, epiphanies wink out when
compared with the truth

roping it all in with a lasso made of twine, there is no
way to corral the hopes in this pen, galloping off
with ideas that were not quite concrete, leaving behind
hand prints that set too fast

longing to get feelings into a form that means something
to someone in some part of the world, traveling the thin
line between appreciation and disparagement, flicking the
pages over the horizon, blurring with the lines in the ledger

stars on the water show the way home, darkness slides slowly
across the tablet, leaving creation to touch and feel,
concepts bloom, pushing perceptions through the
barrier between thought and truth

glb /// “between thought and truth”
originally published 08/04/2019