So too the leisure seeming
of a girl alone in her blue
bedroom late at night
who stares at the bitten
end of per pen
wondering how to write
so that what she writes
stays written...

-Katha Pollitt

I write, but it won't stay written. I paint, but the color won't keep. Messages I try to send, they refuse to go through; and so it seems that no matter how much I write, the words just bleed. Why do my sentences refuse to be born into actions? Why do I continuously write and repeat when I have proven the lack of closure it brings. I have written in not only words but in color as well, the paint repetitious in pigment and form, no matter which I use, no matter what stroke I produce. Have I not learned my lesson? Have I not proven this battle lost? This mask I wear, it must be bullet proof for nothing can come through. But outward, detrimental activity will always seep through, never to be reduced. Why is the pain filled the one I can hold and keep, why is the freedom so far, why is the pain free most frightful? Why is health the end of me? How is the current not my end?

Why will I not answer when my words call me?

How do I write so that it stays written?

What must I do that I have not already?

It seems unfair, somehow, that my body has to suffer

because I, by which I mean my mind, was saddled

with certain unfortunate high-minded notions

that made me tyrannize it and patronize it

like a cruel medieval baron.

-Katha Pollitt

"I don't think people read poetry because they're interested in the poet. I think they read poetry because they're interested in themselves." - Billy Collins

I find what Billy Collins stated to be very accurate, both in terms of poetry and painting. You see, the observer is allowed to relate to a given piece because the creator gave it room to resonate with the individual. In a sense they have completed a piece that is in its very nature, still incomplete. Even if the painter, for instance, had manifested and created based on a specific object, the turn out will vary in symbolic meaning dependent on the given individual. It may be filled with a multitude of literature, yet no one can deem it so; its outward projection left as a meaningless form until the eye of the beholder reads it closely and forms one's own identification with it.