Brain Blimp
I have painted a painting of you,
a portrait, so to speak.
I have painted your brain, or rather
I have made a painting of your brain.
It’s on the wing, so to speak.
I’ve portrayed it not as bird
but as blimp, powered by rocket box
adorned with an eyeball
and soaring above blue water
against blue sky over the loam.
You may not see the resemblance.
You may wonder why I did not
simply ask you to sit in a chair
so that I could paint your exterior,
the features of your face, with
special attention perhaps to your eyes
and the way your hair sits there
on your head
doing what hair does.
You might even be wearing a hat.
Instead, I painted what I imagine
in my mind’s rocket box eyeball,
so to speak, the part of me that sees
the part of you that can’t be seen,
the inside part, the grey matter part
where sparks fly with infinite possibility
above blue water against blue sky
over the loam, blimp-like, where
everything happens and the world
is made and remade and shaped
and reshaped.
I must confess that my
mind’s rocket box eyeball is in actual
fact represented here as the rocket
box eyeball that bears your brain
aloft, because that’s how I have
come to understand the way we
work, the way my eye rocket box
bears your mind aloft, the way, so to speak,
I have carried you and you have
thought for me through infinite
possibility above blue water against
blue sky over the loam, blimp-like.
I have painted your brain.
I have painted a painting of you
and I, too, am in it.
I’m really in it.
(This poem was performed at the Gallery 114 event, “Ekphrastasy,” at DeskHub on October 9, 2015. Seven poets responding the paintings of Rich Powers, Curtis Settino, and Jerry Wellman).
michael jarmer 