The Monkey Mind Paints

With a quiet mind, she stepped out into the room, a paint roller in hand, and started to spread the color on the walls. At first it nibbled at her thoughts, and as she slowly began to replace the worn and dirty white walls with color, she could feel the effect overcome her like a wave, it was visceral. Words that would be poems started to swirl through her mind like leaves falling off the tree in the whistling autumn wind. Instead of writing them down, she edged into the corners with her brush…

I don’t know if it was the quickening of my heart
As you looked over my shoulder at the screen
Perhaps it was the sound of your voice
Falling like silk over my ears
I didn’t mind the coffee on your breath
Or your hair all asunder, the holes in your sleeve
Something unseen, unknowable was pulling me toward

“OW!” She screamed as the cat bit her ankle. Chasing him as he bounded across the room, she noted that his back was coated with yellow paint. She managed to grab him by the tail just as he was about to jump onto the sofa. “Into the bedroom with you,” she said after cleaning him off. She deposited him into the room and closed the door. She paused and glanced around the room noting the play of colors before picking up the roller again to continue the task. She rolled on the stuff, up and down, over and across…

Listen to the wind howling through the windows
Lying here next to you on this cold winter night
My hand under my pillow as my finger reaches
Toward your face, I find it is compelled
to trace the outline of your lip
You awaken at the touch of

“Damn!” she explicated as she lost control of the roller and painted a large swath of the wrong color on the ceiling.

Gone, you never wanted me,
You were repelled at the sight of me
I am just an aging tired woman
Desperate for passion
In the final days before the bleeding stops.
I am worthless, I am vile
I

The phone rang. She put the roller down and ran toward where she thought the phone might be. It wasn’t there. She followed the sound like a homing beacon until she found it. “Can you bring the chicken downstairs, I’m hungry”, her father beckoned from the downstairs apartment. She went to the refrigerator, got the leftover bird and brought it downstairs. Returning through the basement door, she stopped at the landing and surveyed the living room, now completely clothed in its glorious new coat. She stood staring at the walls, feeling the living blood returning to her cheeks.

You are exquisite in your own right
You are color, I invite you in
Possess my thoughts
Inhabit my soul
Inspire my hands
To be your servants
Quiet my drunken mind
With your cool watery blues
Enliven my blood with your rusty reds
Bring my thoughts
Into to the light of your golden sun.

She let the cat out of the bedroom and stooped down to build a fire in the stove. As the coals warmed the air, the two of them lay blissfully entwined on the sofa and she fell asleep to the song of his purr.