Though it could be any time of day.
There are no windows here to spoil the image of the world.
The view is always the same; paint-laden canvases,
layered thick with trees, oceans, and countless bowls of fruit,
all held by tension in heavy, golden frames.
I love the colors,
the shapes, and shadows; the forced perspective.
It always makes me think of how I should have painted that can of soup,
the lonely chair,
or those languishing sunflowers nodding off in a sweltering vase.
How easily I might have coated that incandescent bulb with errant blobs of acrylic as if it were life’s drop cloth, somehow capturing too,
the abiding sorrow of the human condition,
not to mention the mannish woman smirking on the wall.
But no, These are the greats,
and me, well, I’m mediocre at best.
Sometimes I just don’t get what all of the fuss is about.
A boiled red lobster holding the phone,
A single dot on the wall seems meaningless to me.
Is it simply art for art’s sake?
I’ll probably never know.
I yawn as I make my way toward the door,
leaving the otherwise vacant room
and giving one last glance as I pass a picture,
which earnestly assures me that,
it is not a pipe.
by D. Ryan Lafferty
Literary Crumbs: Poems & Short Stories to Savor by D. Ryan Lafferty 