Painters' Exhalations 210
           - after Philip Taaffe's Untitled


Pomegranate's pores,
seepage, opposite disgust
mends the tongue's torn
hankering among
sugar's name
                                    and
sour's choking of taste buds,
relentless.  This bloody fruit
stains the faces of smiling fingers.
Garments, safe
only
                                      in the advent of
partial or blatant protection
called removal
                                                 or
with precision slicing outer fruit clothing
             peeling results in a clean
departure.
                                       Resting in bowls
of ceramic wombs
or
           kept cool by the stainless steel
box's
                 incubating dialed breaths,

the seeded beginning becomes into
satisfaction
                           on a day heat exhumes

   craving
of a carried devotional
outcome, subjective
                                       terminology feeds
the mind's specialized
                                                wants.



Painters' Exhalations 211
           - after John Saccaro's Dreams and Lies


A sleeping state
ersatz    
                angles
articulating
                shapes

                  mischievous
renditions           reality
never imposes     while
ascertaining semblances

marbled in texture.
                  Pathological
curiosity, a drawing
hand
               misinterpreting
the object akimbo or
sitting to command
a self
             diagnosed
differently
nightly,
                   -such is the
fatal form of misunderstanding
night-born abstraction.



Painters' Exhalations 212
           - after Davis Rhodes' Untitled



When shapes
obscure
                          sedentary
                                                 senses,
the eyes unsheathed
                                              focus, a firm focus
on outside lines
capable
                            in the aspect of stilled portraits
to purchase familiarity,
                                                  although
abstract is the fashionable
clothing
                    tailored
                                         to outline
voyeurs' copacetic imaginary
timelines
                         betwixt
death, and the prelude
                                              of birth's ongoing
dilemmas.


Painters' Exhalations 213
           - after Robert Gutierrez's Let Evening Come



For this gift
needn't be man-wrapped, hand-tainted,
                                                       furthermore
                         misleading
the want
                    into reactionary nuisance
as
               the hiding beneath gilded paper

        reveals
a difference, a disposition
not aligned with
                                    the opener's
invented emotions.

All is expected, naked, nude in its documented
vellum.
                         Dusk, its brand of cotton
                               falls
forms
                            on the land awaiting, daily
near the clock's
                                    accurate voice
constructing a message of
evening, welcome.



Painters' Exhalations 214
           - after Mykola Zhuravel's Musicians



The challenge, to close
the mouth, the open eyes.
To feel the colors becoming
bodies,
the hand-poured from
horns' vibrating bells,
depicting concept, time,
turmoil, too, an imitation
of a lake's voice, whispering
into the singing bluebird's
rendition of "What a Wonderful World".


Painters' Exhalations 215
           - after Nguyen Dieu Thuy's Colour of Passion



Or, of the party
balloon
unfettered from
toddler hands,
becomes emancipated
momentarily,
a priori assumed
before the house's ceiling
engages in prisoner tactics
forming seal and shadow
of the rounded decoration,
dwindling after days of uncontrolled
attempts of failed
repossession.

Instead, though
of a rose's graceful blush,
her cheeks toned
to mirror a distance,
a distance resting on horizon's
plentiful table, a blend then
occurs
of which the eyes' hands pluck
and pull and plant these shapes
where the human hands follow
inside a metaphor of new
documentation.