Monochromatic Contradiction

Tenderly caressing

Hues of dark gray,

Embracing the hollowness 

Of the painting

But falling into

The simple black and white contrast

That colors another world,

Where the destruction

Is evident in the delicate design,

Where once a paintbrush

Flowed naturally across canvas

That now lay before my eyes,

I search

For what the artist tried to convey

As if it were another man

Who had made it.

What words hide here

In the woman's eyes,

In her tense arms

And pressed lips

In the shading of the sun

And the craters of the moon?

Maybe one star shines down

On her detailed face

Composed of blacks and whites

Meant to force you to think,

To contemplate the penalties of her silence

And search for the color

That nowhere in this painting can be found

Save, perhaps, the color of her enrapturing thoughts.

My fingertips stroke the contours

And they remember.

Hushed momentarily,

Realization strikes,

Not a victimless occurence,

This woman knows me

This woman understands me

As I her.

She's so solid

In her form, her cleaving figure

Dignified, disciplined,

Stoic, sated,

Bound to a single, hand-painted photograph

Where her mind will not explore, not ever,

Yet still she finds peace

In the fact that she does not know.

And because I know,

I see the bliss in her ignorance, and wish for our contradiction.

Reviews

[Tai Ryens]

I've read this over the span of the days that it took me to finally get around to leaving a thought, this piece really resonated within me.

For starters, I believe your constant references to black and white refer to a state of thinking I find myself affected by, a black and white world in which there are only two sides to judgement. Yet, I find it runs deeper by your acknowledgement of grey, and your leaning towards dark grey, which could mean that you once thought this way but no longer, yet the era was as recent as to still empathize with those feeling that way.
In your journeys through life, you happen upon a painter that lives in a similar mindset, intriguing in the way she is quite silent and brings forth intellectual thinking on your part to decipher what exactly she is, her personality, trying to understand her, in her essence.
And upon discovering what makes her tick, you grow envious of her bliss, of the way she lives happily in black and white because she has seen no other color . . . thus thriving in the bliss of ignorance.

The entirety of this piece is really most enticing, causes me to squeal with excitement and intrigue. Well done, Riley, well done indeed.

[Riley Bray]

I'm glad you found so much to like about this piece Tai! I must say, sometimes I feel as if you understand my poems better than I myself do haha. Lovely review, thanks for it!

[Tai Ryens]

I do empathize quite well with your poetry, aha.