The artist in relation to his work

Onto yawning canvas
he spews his life:
wine dregs, unpaid bills
household paint out of rusty cans
nodules of varnish, credit cards
stained letters from her lover
gilt wallpaper chosen together
collaged flecks of bristle
with pointillistic sweat and skin

flings paint savagely
scavenges discarded tools
and old regurgitations of the sea
cuttle-bone, scarified wood, Styrofoam
spawning at the edge

nighttimes squats alone
under installations of sailcloth
nesting in tents of pure colour.

We catalogue:
four decades as a teacher
one son who escaped
two failed marriages
one dog.

Crepuscular canvases glimmer.
He checks them constantly
groping for ghostings
of dark pools
to slip in a finger
then an arm up to the pit
and finally the dive in
naked

whole.

© Jacqueline Mézec

(This poem was commended in the 2005 Jersey Arts Trust's Channel Islands Writers' Competition and was published in the Jersey Arts Trust's Channel Island Writers' Anthology 2005.)

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