Art (And Nothing More) Poem by Christine Austin Cole

…. somewhere, he is standing with a brush in
one hand and another trapped between his teeth,
oblivious to the drops of paint that have fallen on his
collar, on the floor beside him, on the top of his
bare foot. He is gone; drifting somewhere between the
music flooding through the room and the canvas before
him, sensing an impending lightening strike as he dismisses
one brush in favor of the other, not even knowing why
he would. He, artist. He, painter. He, creator. He is alive.

… and, she, barefooted herself, is pacing unconsciously
in another room, reciting from the book in her hand,
at full voice now, unaware that he’d slipped through the
door Jim Morrison left open just as she was tumbling
through the one Pessoa left ajar decades before. She is
at home; chasing thunder in a place of endless skies,
without boundaries, without the burden of floors,
as if nothing else mattered nor ever again could.
She, artist. She, poet. She, dreamer. She is living.

She is birthing words then without hesitation or
conscious intention, letting them bleed like wet paint
down a wall onto the page. He is spreading colors
without premeditation, reflecting the deepening hues
of a sunset to backdropp the figure standing in shadow
beneath a streetlamp. As the sun falls down, she crawls,
silently, onto his canvas as he embeds himself, deliberately,
into her poem. They are white, and black, and burnt orange
– beyond her words, above his image. They are, for
the night, a night, this night –

Art, and nothing more.