It’s irritating, to hear
that dull scratch of needle on pavement
when what I want
is a thick stroke of imagination
smeared across the gray walls
of convention.

Give me a brush laden
With earthy browns

and sprouting greens,

and life-giving yellows

dipped in wells of blue;
and I will paint the world into being.

Give me a voice brimming
with unsung songs and unspoken speeches;
spitting fire and blazing a trail
where words leap up

crackling, colliding;

jumbling their parts
and defying definition;
and I will conquer silence.

Give me a toolbox
to wrench words out of shape;

to drill holes through granite blocks of tradition;

to unfasten the cranial screws of sanity—

crack open the skull and pour out the gray yoke of brain,
scrambled—
and I will construct a masterpiece of incongruous parts.