The Artist

The air sweeps into the cold, unlit room,

As a single figure, a gentle figure, huddles around his trade

He sets down the blues and blacks of night, the pale skin of mourning, the gold crest of morning, and the soft pink of pain, 

All atop a weary table, where a masterpiece waits to be made.

A palette mixes sky with cloud, lust with shroud, and dust with doubt

An intangible deity, assimilated into a tangible being,

Lingers in the man's old, worn eyes,

As he begins to replace his own, with his new,

A lantern lambently flickering, lost in the translation of a different language.

And so it begins.

He begins.

Again,

For, many times over, his fingers have traced the same path as they do now.

Those soft fingers, no longer his, but an artist's, glide swiftly atop the canvas.

They are a gull, wings spread, finding the currents of the oceanic sky, the wake of apollo's chariots, 

starting a migration to the unknown land.

With the ambitions of Icarus, and the intelligence of Athena, the sullen moon, clouded, gives life to the lost.

He has a vision of her sense of vision,

Crystalline halls with a sapphire tint, 

Deeper blues leaching out of an obsidian orb,

A river delta surrounds the sphere, fading out into deeper waters,

Branches spread, reaching to the atmospheric haze overhead,

As the pacific swells roll viciously, in and out with the tides,

Never monotonous, forever continuous.

Yet, his hands stray from path.

The cerulean of mind blanketed by the intertwining of earthly hues in the heart;

Rich cocoa, this time, dissolving into a golden yellow,

Like a rye field blessing the muddy earth with life, as the earth gives back with fertility,

All capped off with a grayish brown, invigorated with the occasional streak of green.

Her vision was not his, because her heart still is.

A reflection of a tear, yet a controlled inferno rages inside,

Simmering over his right cheekbone. 

And now it's his eyes that are being painted,

As blasts of auburn and Scarlett rise from the ashes of the past.

Violent sweeping arches of gold explode  from the smoldering relic,

His hands grow warm.

He was found after 20 minutes, 

A charred brush balancing between his right hand and reality,

His world had been reduced to black.

His delusion had ceased to be,

And under the rubble and ash of it all, 

The cold seemed such a faint memory, 

As the ice began to creep up his skin.