The Unfinished Canvas Poem by Mira Midha

I walk into a room,
Bare yet not stark
But for an easel in a corner dark.

Oh… so alone,
It spoke a lot…
Yet said nothing.
A portrait of an artists' life,
A tempest mind in strife.
I vision a missing thought,
Guilty lines, fingerprints of hope,
Some bold, some pale
Or grey random strokes.
Over coated, amidst oils,
Blank, white edges,
Spaces filled, leaving smudges.
I stare at strokes layered
Incomplete, confused…
But used
On one half of a canvas,
The other with invisible words
Of a dilemma, I only heard.
And on the floor
Near the open door,
The palette flung, paints in ire,
But there seemed a desire,
As colours flowed and merged,
Urged
To reach the canvas, but dried
As they tried.
There the brushes, clumsy
Still wrapped in paint,
One here, one there…
The bristles stiff and thin
As ‘rigor mortis' had set in.
Dabbed sprays on a discoloured wall,
Wrote an angered dismay
Of the artist,
As his mind did not play
The tune his hands wanted to.
Tin cans flung in disarray and dent,
Spoke of a growing wrath spent
On the unknown tale
Painted across and wide,
Anarchy from side to side.

And as I trace my steps back,
View this mental storm from the out,
My mind shouts
To see not the unfinished canvas,
Not an end or a start,
But an entire masterpiece in this room
As a single work of art.