Calisthenics - week 9

Leave the Shame Behind
oil on linen over panel
Chris Peters, 2007

Yellow

“Shhhhh”, I whisper to my child as I tell of the blacks and blues,

The oil pastels smeared across landscapes,

Painting images of graveyards blotting over fields of tulips.

I speak of how yellow does not exist, It’s too lively,

We’re too stale and bitter like a black cup of coffee

In the morning when I wear my shades to breakfast.

I then reflect how mundane we all are,

How cobwebs clutter every joint of my body,

And artistic pallets of deities could not suppress

The routine of work and eat and sleep recycled again and again.

Even my wife cries every night at the foot of her bed on her knees,

But I gave up on God when he, “made you sick”, I told my son,

When a sneeze threatened your entire life,

And a needle contained the answer to our prayers

When you would choke on your own lungs.

Now here I sit painting your name on my arm with my finger tips,

Absorbing every brush against my brown hairs, remembering you.

And now my head in my hands I feel my pulse,

Imagining it was yours, as if you were really here.

And only then do I feel the yellow seep in.