I am a painter.
With words on my palette
And a barb in my heart,
I sing for my equals
And do my best
To start a revolution
For the thinkers,
Not the formulas,
For it is these bitter patterns
That always pull me down.
Oh! To be a scholar!
To always have the answer
And never to dwell
On the prettiness of things.
In a world that is harsh,
To never see the sunlight.
Although I know that I would have to sacrifice my spirit
To be one of their number.
This is why I am a painter.
Fight for the freedom to love,
For hatred has only cheated us thus far.
The wars were wasted,
Like the lives that fell like leaves at their hand.
“Love thy neighbour,”
Came the call from above.
Why do we ignore the words of God?
Is it because he is human too?
You know what I really hate?
I found a piece of paper while I was walking home. It was lying on its side in the grass, still crisp and clean, folded twice. I could see from the ragged edge that it had been torn from a large notebook, not unlike the one tucked away in my oversized handbag.
I looked at this piece of paper in the long, green grass, wondering momentarily what to do. My curiosity won out in the end, so I picked it up and carefully unfolded it to look for a name or some identifying mark so that I might return it to its owner.
It wasn’t the scholarly notes I had been expecting, rather a vague kind of family tree. There were no names, just titles like ‘Mommy’, and a few nationalities: English, Irish, Scottish, Maltese; all scrawled onto the page in black felt tip pen. There also seemed to be a short chronology of events in the individual’s life, including years spent in Hong Kong.
I felt a little strange, like a voyeur observing the remnants of a conversation I wasn’t meant to hear, and would never fully understand. I was touched to think I had been granted this look at someone’s personal make up, a strange mistake that had worked in my favour. I felt special to have been given the honour of finding this intimate insight, lost on a slip of notepad paper, torn out and lost in the grass, folded twice in half.
In awe of the power of such a strange find, I folded it back along its crease lines; once, twice, then in half again, and slipped it into my back pocket for further reading at a later time.
As I continued on my way, I stumbled across another slip of paper, much worse for wear; torn and stained by old mud.
It was a receipt from Big W. The previous owner had bought chocolate and a doorstop. It wasn’t that interesting, so I threw it in the bin, where I felt it belonged, because it just wasn’t nearly as good as my other find, lost in the fresh, green grass.
When you are old
There will be a house
On a hill
Where you will dwell,
All cosy and warm and wrapped in a blanket.
There you will dwell.
And the trees all around,
For miles around,
Will shelter you from the world,
As your hands get arthritic from their years of toil
And your fists refuse to open.
Only then will you hear my name,
Breathed softly on the evening wind,
And remember youthful times long past.
My lonely spirit will smile on you
And all your aging memories,
Vivid as the day they were wrought.
And though you can’t see me
I will gently brush the silver hair from your wrinkled brow
In the hope that for a moment
(I don’t want long, just a moment)
You’ll wish you hadn’t been so dismissive of my Echo of old.
Noni Doll