Paint.

My hands are gone, lost in pools of paint // clay // oil pastel //
swirling the mischievous moisture from palm to wrist to elbow.
Puddles of insanity dripping slowly faster slowly faster still:
no longer red or yellow or blue but a magnificent mud.
Fingertips slipping through palette to identify the remnants of
color to press onto canvas // paper // board // brick

Limbs stretch quickly across surface in attempt to capture the gesture
of nude form/human, frozen still: a woman’s curves slipping
in line after line after line after line — hands work fast, furious,
to create form or mess or something in between with color or not.
You see the shapes upon shapes upon shapes and she is a sculpture
to flatten // to form // to evolve // to undo // to trace 
and etch 
and sink into
her mold from eye to hand through perception to flat to form to function. 
A gaze: empty, a smile: shifting, a shiver: silent.

A figure with no story, a story with no figure, a person with layers
upon layers upon layers upon layers upon layers upon layers of
you’ll never see so you have to imagine peeling slowly, gracefully
What orchestration is there of beauty // music // soul lost behind
the stillness of a model caught up in a 5-minute sketch or a two-hour pose
or a lifetime of playing a role don’t move // don’t move // don’t move
// don’t let them see more than your form in its effortless light and shadows.

As paint piles up on skin and charcoal smothers hand 
and forehead catches a hint of Cobalt Blue, you haven’t noticed, 
you’re lost scrawling a lifetime of stories in a thousand lines 
about a person you’ll never know. You’ve done this once, twice, 
a thousand times, and a thousand times more,
all the scribbles and ink and wants and moments and messes,
on a thousand pages long forgotten, ever ready to sketch again.