A hundred witnesses on the wall

would at least not reach consensus. 

If color and contour match, so must opinion. 

I escape it, for a time. 

So the pharaoh is foiled, 

the flower arrested,

the warhorse seized in the charge. 

Their acrylic strokes are pigment and plastic,

and they cannot decide my innocence—

or my guilt. 

---

In hindsight, I jumped the gun

or should have been franker, sooner,

but don’t name me the cause of your shortcomings.

And don’t demand a fight.

I won’t kick you when you’re down

(except, in fair frankness,

you were falling ere I approached).

---

My new collection know my frustrations,

scratched and stained in the canvas,

so that the Jack and desert scape

recall your frivolity and unfocus. 

“That one’s pretty,” a friend said of Namibian sands,

cadmium red

like the witch’s hourglass turned quickly and finally

on the amateur who thought herself an ingenue.