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
