The Painter Poem by Nick Stanton

Real life somehow defeats him
foreshortened, distorted, it never comes out right.
Something in the brain means
he sees well in only two dimensions.
He was going to be Monet
instead he repaints Vermeer.
By the dropcloth and half-finished canvas
sit his tubes of paint-shiny, thumbdented.
And late at night, the light intense
the wet acrylics dazzling
he surrenders to the silence of the page
and transfigures reality.
A victim of its shrill tirades
drawing flippin` pictures.