the artist's allegory

[white camellia]

some thoughts as free as a mad man's word
brushes and dashes on her bored canvas

some came simply to experiment their little dreams
her thoughts as forlorn as a passerby moment

colors and lines run to search their forms
as still as the thoughts in the picture she sits

like a masterpiece of selfportrait in private
hung, breathing perpetually on his wall

[firefangled]

Good to see you back, white camilla. I really like this one, short but powerful.

[qimissung]

Yes, I like the short ones that pack a punch. Love the first line. It's the kind you carry around in your head, muse on, and eventually quote.

[jon1jt]

Beautiful poem, cam. Seems there's a shift away from the speaker who revels in a form of pure freedom to one in which such freedom is conditional, as if to say that art necessitates some restraint from the artist---for the sake of the validating eyes of her audience?

as sovereignty in submission
all validated, and obliged

I'm also curious about that 'bored canvas.' Bored in the sense of 'uninteresting'? unseen?

This poem makes me feel like I'm tied and gagged in an art gallery and the people file by and say, 'Alloy or vigorous dripping?'

[white camellia]

I made a big change to it, firefangled and qimissung. Thanks. Glad firefangled you 'saw' me with my little poem back. Qimi, I didn't change a word of that line!...except one.

Jon, how good to have your words again. Exactly, there is the shift. There is a slight contrast between the past and the present. Validated, for those who truly appreciate it.

Sometimes, thoughts come because one is bored? Your last line makes me laugh. :- )

[kiz_paws]

some thoughts as free as a mad man's word
brushes and dashes on her bored canvas

some came simply to experiment their little dreams
her thoughts as forlorn as a passerby moment

colors and lines run to search their forms
as still as the thoughts in the picture she sits

like a masterpiece of selfportrait in private
hung, breathing perpetually on his wallVery nice. That closing line is beautiful.

[a_little_wisp]

That is lovely, camellia. Qimissung is right, and I think this one will dance around in my mind all day like a tune I can't quite dismiss - of course, in this case, that's a good thing. :D

[blp]

The new version is good, but it's a shame to lose the old one. It had a kind of ending that you almost seem to have invented - a last line that's shorter than the others and, by breaking the rhythm, seems to almost drop the reader back into reality.

The couplets in the new one add something and it seems to be less bogged down in abstractions, to pun a little on the subject matter. Not sure I minded the abstractions before. I couldn't make up my mind. But it did feel a bit as if you'd got some intellectual ideas you were trying to work out and it might be inhibiting the poetry of the piece. Stronger imagery here suits the fact that you actually end up with a self-portrait this time. Unless I'm forgetting it in the previous one.