when the dead man wants to dabble in painting, he arranges his brushes
he brushes away the dirt from those shoes, applies a base coat, leaves them to dry
the dead man takes out a charcoal, that piece he pilfered from a pyre,
he sketches on the shoes, a design so chaotic, but orderly for him
on a palette, the dead man mixes paints, and first fills the cracks
(but why paint on a shoe, he utters loudly, he has misgivings too)
the dead man knows, shoes denote freedom, that journey which goes on and on
one shoe can fall apart, other one might last longer, as did his twin
thinking of his zygoted part, dead man becomes sad and melancholic
but his brush never stops, it goes over corners, makes lines, curves and dots
the dead man's lean brush tells a story on the uppers of shoes
he makes it as easy for us, as complicated as it was for him
"our dead man knows his story needs to be told but where has he gone?"
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Thanks to Big Tent Poetry, I got to know about Marvin Bell and his Dead Man Poetry. For more Dead Man poems by Marvin Bell, do check out the Poetry.org site.
