Berry Season (My Face Was Once A Canvas)

After years of black and gray
and dusting the pencil shades
off the seams of my wrists:
I have learned the subtlety of colour,
and that gracefulness can co-exist with bright
hues of debauchery
sultry golds and pastel pinks
and deep reds reminiscent of overripe cherries
that disappear whole into wet lips;
wet


paint on my mouth, cool as ether on
my fingers the corners of my eyes. I've grown bolder..
there's a neon dash on my eyelids and a smudge
on the tip of my nose
like a cleansing strip of sky. It's the season
of berries and plums.
And deep in the rich soil the colours are seeping through,
my watershed veins like capillaries
and it's so easy to lose control; in that colour,
all that colour-



Sometimes the poems blossom in a rush,
like the paint;
like a plant that slept too long into spring, and forgot
that its flowers had to bloom, bloom, bloom
so like the shots of a cannon boom, boom, boom
the words thud out to the pulse of the heart
through red muscle and bone-



and I open my blue mouth and sing to you
with my lips the colour of blueberries in summer-
So come;
taste my blood-cherry teeth
and oh my blackberry gums,
the damp of wet gouache paint
still
half-drying
on my tongue