Poems Niederngasse Issue 84 - January 2008


Rob Omura
Still Life on Canvas
 
Who knew you could paint?
 
I am your finest work ever:
the man with hollow eyes --
a half portrait caught in shadow
(like a Goya caricature)
the still life on canvas.
 
You stomped out my words,
like a cigarette butt to heel,
muted my voice with the back of your brush
killed the muse in blood red ochre
made my face a watercolour blue,
my lips an eggshell white.
 
I accepted this fate without complaint,
and turned my lips up in a Mona Lisa smile
(though I may have whimpered),
until acrylic dripped into my eyes
and my soul screamed in mixed media.

The line around my finger fades
as sun gives colour to pale hands.
I stretch atrophied muscle
and put India ink to page
breathing free air again.
 
Though chalk bone is rickety
pastel fingers unsure
charcoal filters my mind clear
and my voice flows to pen again.
(though I still smell turpentine under my fingernails).
 
Sorry, I couldn't hold that pose any longer,
so you could finish your painting;
don't fret, my dear,
you'll find another subject for your art.


Robert K. Omura lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada where he practices law. He is active in education, law reform, the environment and the outdoors. His fiction and poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Arabesques Review, Barnstorm, The Rose and Thorn, Agency Magazine, 34th Parallel, Poems Niederngasse, edifice WRECKED, Denver Syntax, Mississippi Crow, Noneuclidean Cafe, blue skies poetry, Writing the Land Anthology, Brink, Outercast, and Paradigm. He is currently working on a novel, but that's slow going at best.
email:  robkomura@yahoo.ca