SPLIT LEAF
Let the Colors Burn
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I ask you – the viewer – to do a little work:
Let the colors, when they blaze,
burn you.
Let the colors, when they fade away,
still you.
Let the colors, when they alter a face or leaf,
transform you.
Let the leaf’s broken fragments
pierce your heart like glass.
Let the many faces haunt you.
It could be your face.
Let the dancing lines
carry you merrily along.
Let the vanquished lines
stun you.
Let the murky reds, muddy browns
slash and stain your memory.
Let loose your imagination in the yellow-pink burst.
Let the missile black spike
invade your body’s boundary.
Let the red and black and nightmare blue
into your gut.
Feel the grime and grit and dirt peeled off the hot asphalt of New York City streets.
Catch the splash of terror
as the leaf is split raw
Watch it bleed. Watch it bleed.
Be the flesh and let the claustrophobic blue swamp you,
vandalize you,
Then wipe you out of existence.