I'm sure Schopenhauer never did a paint-by-numbers
philosophical pessimism just seems incompatible with
a paint-by-numbers kit
particularly when you laugh and shake your head
while I confuse the colors and collapse the lines and
paint the sixteen in the six or the nine in the seven
there's something there that has to prove
Camus wrong when he said that we have to imagine
Sisyphus happily lugging the rock up the hill
over and over again
as if you could reduce all our talk between brushstrokes
about vampires and romance
to something finite and hopeless
you know this instinctively
you give it away through
constant reassurances
that what I'm painting actually does look like a cat
thank you very much
It makes me think that the mystics probably had it right
like one can imagine Traherne painting this ornament
exactly as poorly as me
and thinking that the whole world was
gifted entirely to ensure that we
sit across from each other
in this moment
and do precisely this
Kempis would probably say something
about how feeling love is better than
knowing how to define it
which is of course something that
you said even better, though
you confessed that you'd really given
no deep thoughts to this
but clearly neither did Heidegger
or Hume
or Nietzsche
since if they had they'd know that the answer
to the great question
lies in painting what looks like a Christmas tree
with you