Cave Painting

Dark and dank, alive with beasts
that whistle and hiss as they doze,
this is the cave I choose to paint with my life
for you to recompose.

Red ocher have I for the fires of passion
burning unchecked in my heart;
charcoal have I for the dread of nothingness,
for galaxies spinning apart.

Goldenrod I mix with elbow grease
to picture affairs of the day;
and blueberries I crush to stain the rock
with dreams you can’t rinse away.

I paint with branches, sticks and twigs,
fingers, moss and bone,
I stencil my own primitive hand,
incise the rock with stone.

The pigments bleed off every wall
and stories streak the floor
as in a fevered pitch I draft and smear
my life in metaphor.

The beasts awaken when I’m through,
their throaty murmurs rise;
I flee the cave and let them wait
for you to theorize.