for Ben Schonzeit, painter

You offer me slices of your days
in gaunt calligraphy, black and red,
wives, sons, taxes, debts, wishes.
Each word is in training for the next
image, the next still life; imagination
slides into memory and we swing dance
through your studio guarded by layered
narratives in orange, purple and gray, out
into the street past bold words written
about technique, color and form, past
people who nod knowingly, people who
have never heard your ache to be alone, to remain
in your dark cave, throwing taxes, even wishes
to the winds, ordering all finished paintings removed
immediately, letting the only world you inhabit
be etched, without intrusion,
onto a single black canvas.