An Artist's Palette

An artist's palette can run dry with air
when using the paint to color his melancholy.
For who else can portray the yellowness of skin
or the movement of unsorted emotions on flat canvass
if it were not for the betrothal of colors and mind?

If one were to touch another's soft palette
with pink tongues instead of their own brushes,
language would not be borne to humans alone,
but to every creature born with the sense to feel
how they are the greatest of all living things.

One must take each color in its own rawness
and spread the legs of longing like a resting mare's.
One must taste indifference as if it were transparent
as if it were water that flows viscously instead of blood.
A tincture of red should brush from where the unicorn's horn
had been replaced with brown hair that made it into a horse.

If one were to taste the green seeds or leaves
and make haste, the blueness of skies or tears,
one's mind would quickly follow suit to endeavor
this inescapable need to illustrate what is invisible:
The landscapes of this earth without a hint of soil,
the changing of seasons without a hint of sunlight.

One must bury oneself in the grains of laboring
and continue to dream as if dreams were unfolding flowers.
Then, orchards must be grown in the black and light
under the sense of an artist's impassioned eloquence:
With furious longing like that of a burning forest
or with the intense desire to pollinate wild spores.

One must discover all of nature's individual tastes
before one can even begin to depict a new dream.
For who else can envision the portrait of a man
who starves himself repeatedly with empty worlds
when he deprives himself of this gustatory excursion?

The colors must be placed carefully on each duct
before it can be made to evoke its curious miracles.
If not, the eyes would be blind, the lips would be pale,
and flesh would be purple or blue like a dying infant's.
A fair amount of wallowing would produce a masterpiece,
as realism acquaints the senses to the color of melancholy.