Empty Dust

Empty,
the same way a desert would be in the middle
of July, dry and arid and senseless, cloudless skies
and not a car in sight of the dirty unpaved roads.
Every corner is littered with scraps of historical trash, perhaps
the notion of the delicate process of cleaning seemed irrational
when there's nothing to clean, and all that nothing is smothered
in filth. Nevertheless, I became a part of that nothing, painted
onto a still life with a quivering hand and old acryllics. I'm made
to be sitting on the edge of a spring mattress, facing the window.
Not quite as elegantly as you would think. The pane is a fourth of
the way open but it's enough to let in the powdered breeze. The
thin curtains hanging on either side of the window shiver and reach
over to me for comfort. One of them manages to brush the corner of my
cheek and finding no consolement there, retreated back to its place
on the chipped clay wall. It's fine, I find no consolement there either.
I lean back and surrender to the naked mattress, I sense the uneasiness
of this movement in the artist. I search for comfort
through the shifting of my legs and arms but the damage has been done, and
the permanence of the picture has been defined by my impatience.
There is a struggle between what is and what should have been.
Inevitably the dust settles and only the heat is echoing
through the emptiness,
beating on a discarded canvas like a tightly wound drum.