Paint By Numbers by Jakob Chapman

Inspired by Lana Grow’s "Catch the Rhythm, Join the Party"

We paint in packs
the way others might party
(without parental "super-vision")
secretly splashing pigment
on each other’s paintings
when they are not paying
attention.

Distract a neighbor
while the sable brush
of another flicks
a shower of sparkles,
glittering globs of gold,
flying tincture murder,
or just a bad case
of Montezuma’s
revenge.

And watch
as the hand-guided
maquillage blooms
(like an atomic blusher),
and drips down
the oily foresail surface
like a projectiled
ovum accident
caught on candid
canvas.

Join the party;
play the blame game:
who did what where
as we regard
the rumba’d rhythmicity
of botched realism,
and jive jovially
toward artistic
Platonism.

Consider it foul
(if you will call
it anything at all)
artistic sabotage
mingled with
mischievous multi-chromatic
wrongdoing.

But at least it is
still recognizably
abstract.

This poem won the 2007 ARCC Connecting With Art Poetry Contest and was featured in the 2007 Rapids Review. This poem is currently under contest consideration.

Poetry OR Poem