He was part reader and part painter,
part literary lover and part post-impressionist,
but most importantly, and above all else,
he was a tender lover of both.
He found romance in the simplest of sentences,
and affirmations in each of his brushstrokes,
because he was taught a young age
that love could be cruel and could not be controlled,
and he wanted so desperately to control it,
like the movement of his brush.
But the world didn’t operate in objective colors,
and the literary painter was lonely most nights,
in Square Saint-Pierre or that little yellow house,
thinking himself a failure in both love and art,
the two halves of his broken soul.
He couldn’t live without love,
without beauty so breathtaking it inspired every moment
that came before and after him.
Despite the failures,
the literary painter continued his search for love,
not in the people he couldn’t control,
but in the language of art,
in the colors of prose.
In the poetry of his painting,
he sculpted metaphors and similes in lines,
an entire language of love:
and all in the swirls of the night sky:
Without doubting, without hesitation,
and with self-assurance,
to find beautiful that which is beautiful.
-JC