The Painter and the Painting

Like the story of Dorian Gray, this poem tells a story of a painter, a painting, a personality and the marks that personality left behind. Unlike the character of Dorian Gray, the subject of this poem lived up to all expectations and probably his own, too - as noted, at least from afar.

Always a worthy opponent, the attempt at a description was well warranted:

A Red, Abstract Painting

Passion colors all it touches in its own hues.
-Balthasar Gracian

This is the color left behind prosaic marks aside and upright

In prone madness

For what once right but now discarded
drowned

Not by anything laid down but by viscosity and flurry

Even wind on the snow there cries
Bleakly through spare dark trees and black water

Red is but one significant shade of this music
it glows
From above and below like illumination

or fire

A span but a hand's breadth away

A war where there is only a door of black water

Above and beneath so you see shimmering rifts
Like moonlight crossing slowly the water
Like touch, not paint.