The next sketch of your room

A poem featuring a special guest.

Vincent Van Gogh, “The Bedroom,” 1889

---

Since I invoke Vincent’s name and work in this poem, I should say for the avoidance of doubt that his commitment to Getting Out and paying attention to the world around him was heroic, far exceeding my own. I have no business making a few of his paintings into a metaphor for my own habits of work and life. And I did it anyway, because poets are shameless like that.

---

WRITING POEMS ABOUT WRITING POEMS                               2014


When we do it (all of us do), it is for the same reasons
that Vincent painted views of his rented room,
portraits of his shoes, maps of his bandaged face:

because it is what we know best,
because it is what is nearest,
because the gorgeous colors of the world can be so fierce
some days that we feel safer staying home,
even when laces tangle
and walls lean in
and parts of us bleed away.

I know. I do it too. Some days, though, I wish we would all wake up
to a command scrawled in bold new cursive across our canvases,
the pages of our notebooks: Get Out, Now.
Pocket your last handful of change and leave the house.
Go sit in a park, a soup-kitchen, a café, sip absinthe or fizzy water.
Look at faces that are not your own, shapes beyond the reach of your arm.
When you realize (you will) that you are watching yourself look,
stop and laugh, and look again.

Stay out until your drink is gone,
or your cash, or your fortitude;
then come home to safe walls,
the familiar bed and chair,
mirror and shoes,
brush and pen.

Maybe you will have a new picture in mind; at least, may be,
the next sketch of your room will have new colors in it.

---

All right, any poets who’ve read this far: out with it. Link us to your own favorite poem about writing poems. You know you’ve got one. Give. A quick session of meta-poetry is good for the soul, and afterwards we can all pack up our notebooks and leave the house together.