When's the last time you wrote in pictures? Where you

shared your deepest emotions through waxy crayons and colored pencils?

Where words didn't say more than the picture.

Lines and shapes, add to sketches then,

Portraits covered up all the surface?

Off highway I-45 in Milwaukee, WI,

I saw a canvas.

The sun was in the left hand upper corner, beaming orange-yellow.

Birds flew in packs toward the sun.

For miles the grass and hills were deep green with hints of tan now and again.

The sky reflected hues of blue.

And stars sparkled in the distance creating spider-webbed pathways to the moon.

I witnessed the complexity in this artist’s shading patterns.

As if they covered up nightmares with dark nesting holes where,

birds nest translated to vultures lurking on dying flesh.

Or stars sparkling throughout the skies,

were telecommunications God lost while caring prayers to the heavens. 

The depiction of self in the world was worth more than 1000 words,

but dirty laundry was always inventively displayed in public streets.

Since elementary, I questioned the curvatures in pictures.

Tried to decode the subconscious to better understand finished work from drafted.

I put personality in art,

narrated the Once Upon a Time and Happily Ever After’s.

Invented characters like Lily, Marie, and Sasha, with different plot lines.

like horror films and chick flicks. 

Everyday I traced the blueprints of secret hiding spots on old buildings.

Like an image that just won't slip away, my drawing had become redundant.

I imagined everything, from the tree's to the mountains,

the birds and bees and sexual conversations with parents.

I even created quick jump outs, like and immediate forced stop and exit

through phrases like,

"Soooo.... I hear you've got your Period!" 

I started drawing out memories as a release from the ghetto ass shit and abuse found in poverty,

I constructed stairwells to secret sub-layers in honey hives

spiraled daisy petals like tornados.

Twisted three secret railroads between the mountains and valleys,

like alleys and short cuts between adolescence.

I armored swamps with frogs on lilies, on top of hungry crocks

As if the guards of my limitless imagination.

I bolded italic V's in grass like handles to the underground like sewer systems.

I put knotholes on trees, as if doorknobs to a different scenery.

Added boobey-traps in front of bushes with quick-sand

as if I was the only one allow in.

I drew out all the highways,

added height with every lie and deception in life.

Every tree had branches like

Greek mythologies Medusa.

Twigs looked like venom snakes with fruit size heads on tips.  

That bit, chewed, then spit up all the fear they sensed.

Each of my hand strokes were guided with coded riddles.

I hash tagged my Picasso with LMS in post traumatic stress.

I communicated through lines and shapes, and later added colors.

Primary colors filled the portrait like indefinite wormholes.

Red meant scary and purple were frustrations,

I learned to tell a story with just colors and my memories.

I became so lost in my imagination that at times my eyes cried for no apparent reason,

but then I became hurt and angry inside.

So lost in subconscious I kept drawing.

In high school, my senior year I took a psychology class to better understand my outburst.

I drew of purple balls bouncing down open roads.

I dreamt of fire breathing dragons in my lap with no where to go.

I screamed in fear of my demons, lurking behind 

red, orange, yellow, green leaves on trees.

Their minions hiding behind fallen leaves.

My nightmares consisted of things looking at me through the bushes.

Sometimes I tended to lurk in the obscurities.

I thought I could stand up to my unknown.

Walk right up to every turn and walk freely through my Eden's Garden.

Grab a pencil and write in my secret corner but I can't. 

So I draw out my hallucinations and then write it down in similes and metaphors.

Like passageway to my deepest thoughts and inspirations. 

I write to make what is scary beauty,

even when it is only a sketch on the canvas off of I-45 in Milwaukee.