SELF-PORTRAIT

 

  (My poem is based on a painting by Kyla @Deviantart)

This is how my critics will remember me,

the painter gone raving mad in his studio,

a scape of land or sea sadly unfinished,

a sky so morosely dark the blue dappled to gray.

These eyes once joyfully squinted out of focus

so that I might envision the sketched canvas

imbued with pigments, a painting brushed into life.

Now the eyes you see in this self-portrait

lock themselves in a black-rimmed bugging stare

that confesses lunacy. Bands and splotches of red,

blue and yellow: colors meant for saner work.

What am I thinking here? Will a caption save me?

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(C) 2017 by Salvatore Buttaci 

TROIKU #2

fresh fallen snow
dot the flower heads
like white patches of stars

the yellow Chrysanthemums look
upward assembling Heaven
with myriad facets of their petals

more yellowish
than autumn leaves –
each petal a miniature sun

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SKIP THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

I once believed that if I read

too many tales of fantasy, 

somehow a witch would find a way

to make my life a travesty.

She's pile on my scrawny head

whatever mash her cauldron made,

then melt to mush my sanity.

I'd chase that little Riding Hood,

cleave her head with a wedge of steel,

or follow Snow White bashfully.

I'd shed fake tears and disagree,

I'd stomp my feet in nasal whines,

I'd live my life vicariously.

But is it smart to live a lie?

Perhaps I ought to give the boot

to books without a shred of truth.

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(C) 2017 by Salvatore Buttaci

TO SHED SOME LIGHT

(inspired by a painting by Matt Dixon)

I miss the old light bulbs Uncle Sam

replaced with new halogen incandescents.

To shed some light on the situation,

watt prompted intensifying the lumen count?

The white coil screwed into the fixture

strikes me as almost other-worldly alien,

the way it lies about long-life illumination,

the subterfuge, the home invasion

of those content with a darker shade of light.

But what disturbs me most is the loss

of that metaphoric light bulb that clicked

with every new idea bulging with

brilliance, lighting the road just enough

to gather words and phrases to build a poem.

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http://www.salbuttaci.blogspot.com