The Aging Artist

The story written in the previos blog (entitled: The Canvas) came from a poem i wrote back in a poetry workshop class i took a few winters ago. Poetry is not my strongest genre, but i was told that this was damn good. Is it? I am not sure, i suppose you can decide that for yourself. I will say that there is/was something to the poem that made me want to go back to it and explore it with a fiction piece. So, for shits and giggles i figured i would post the only decent poem i have written or probably ever will write. I think its fun to read this and compare it to the other piece. Maybe not though, i don't know.

The Artist
By J.L. Hickey

I often found him hunched

over a small white desk

with a very loud yellow lamp

resting above his shoulders

as if it was his own personal

blazing sun, illuminating his creations.

I would sit and watch his dirty fingers

while his brush would magically

create life from nothingness.

A tall sailboat braving the Atlantic waves,

a dirty back end of a pick up truck

including all the fixings of white trash.

Gadgets sprawled all around him

the necessary tools of his trade,

rulers shaped like triangles and

erasers that looked like wrapped caramels

but smelled like the soles

of my childhood shoes.

Now I find him often hunched

on the lazy boy recliner

watching his shows and stories,

his fingers pink and wrinkled

his hair now shaded in

with white and grays

as if his pencil’s have turned against him.