outstaring a blank wall

outstaring a blank wall 

You stand before a wall.
It waits, blank as withheld breath.

What hovers over you?
Drafts unpinned,
stories unspoken,
videos sealed,
pages chasing horizons
that never arrive.

Perfection dithers-
a mask for delay.
What if you placed
one imperfect mark?
What if you let motion
carve its shape?

The wall gathers:
crooked sketches,
half-born concepts,
awkward stretches,
jokes collapsing mid-laugh.

Chaotic. Messy.
Unfit for display.

Yet weeks later-
fragments draw together,
a shape begins to inhale.

Not triumph,
but a quiet forming,
a world exhaling
what ‘til now was withheld.





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Reviews

[Michael Sun Bear]

Good morning Frederick. A nicely written metaphor for the struggle of any artist to create. Although walking around my home town of Edmonds, where murals have been painted on alley walls, it could be a painter staring at an actual wall.

[redd Brick Keshner]

Indeed, the wall could very well be a painter’s canvas. That’s an exciting image as well🕊🙏🏻