The Painter's Pot

How free is thought, a painter’s pot

To tease the half-poised brush

Where air is charged with verse at large

And unpenned poems rush

A potent stream of hope-pray-dream

And this, the poet’s task

Where eons splay to snare a ray

From time’s unstoppered flask

How deep the sky where poet’s fly

How ink-betrothed, their flight

No paradise of thoughtless sighs

To appease day or night

But with a thirst, half-blessed, half-cursed

On phantom wings they rise

To raid the stars and boulevards

That bard alone descries

Amethyst, pink, turns into ink

The balladeer of pen

Dare not despise whispered war-cries

Which writhe beneath the skin

Where want-of-verse and taunt immerse

To spar with thought and jot

As poets shape their no-escape

From this; the painter’s pot

© Janet Martin