A TOUCH OF MAGENTA ONE AFTERNOON

What are our definitions of creativity? Are we like street artists who have to be like guerrilla fighters--painting on the streets with minimal supplies, being watched as they create, being part of the tourist experience. Creating is an intimate act, and yet like voyeurism, we like to watch something as intimate as the process of inspiration and then creation. I suppose some wish they could paint or write or compose and what about the lovers of art, can they be a part of the process, the internal skeleton of creation? Can that be enough to keep the process going? The I Ching reads...

Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish to the crowd.

A Touch of Magenta One Afternoon

A confetti breeze is felt on a
gingerbread storybook street;
a luminous easel refracts
magenta from a mackerel sky.
A Machiavellian man,
a seraph of art,
paints from a somber palette,
hidden behind
a misconduct of reverence,
his nameless vice—
a nude woman.

Nestled close and woven,
observers matched in
committed fabric,
two women watch
the artist work; they are illuminated
by the moon, entwined arms, entwined breath.
Single words expose what they feel--
beauty, fluidity, passion, art--
All while sharing the affinities
of a tortoise shell hair clip.

Standing sealed, holding an
elbow to perilous advantage,
a compass of confessions,
a bright light of exposure,
a complementary portrait of
a silenced woman,
fragile as quiet lovers.

Art is a stroll, a beautiful place
on a public street of Paris; heat
fills hearts with infinite possibilities,
love is as elemental as color like paint
layered onto Sappho’s easel.
A brunette and a blond—roman a clef,
they hold their fears through the equinoxes.

The nude--a polarized myriad of surfaces
emerges off the face of the canvas.
Their minds—fractured
and overlapping with reasons.
No white purity of diversity while
allowing a tender joining;
beads hung low into
the cleavage of discovery,
all sewn into the
internal seam of a woman.
Once they’ve seen enough,
still arm and arm, they move on.