The Faults of Apollo

What happens when you peel away the layers

Scrape away the acrylics

Is it a doll inside a doll

Inside a doll 

All with the same expression

Painted on permanently?

 

What happens when you reach the center?

When the canvas is bare?

 

What if there is nothing there but sketches over taut fabric?

A promise of potential never fulfilled?

 

Start with the basics, blue and red mixed are purple,

Am I the perfect shade of purple?

 

A brush's to me smooth on an infinite terrain of white

Where do I lay my first stroke?

Do I start with the mountains of acrylics or the oasis of watercolor?

 

Even if I started with mountains of color, would I ruin the doll that I worked so hard to perfect? 

The paint would cling its permanent pigment in my hair making me forever a part of the immobile mountain?

 

But then I could drown and be swallowed up by the impermanence of it all. All it takes is more water and all the beauty of my painted face could wash away. Or do I stay here, never laying my first brush stroke because I fear both paths. 

 

Faceless buyers and anonymous clappers and supporters

Who would buy a damaged painting covered with holes?

Covered isn't the right word because I am imperfect, I am filled with holes.

 

If I were a doll I could smile for the teachers and doctors, if I were a painted perfection, at least then I would know who I am. I must smile for the crowd though and give them the picture what they want, despite me being flesh and emotional. After showing them the painted copy I can go and erase the dirty sketches in private. I'll make myself look effortless. I'll  be porcelain 

 

Who cares if I am bought?

My inner doll does. The constant need to get better, it does. More than anything it cares about who cares and in that roar of any anonymous clappers there is immense silence. Silence is overbearing it fills every moment that I am not working on my internal canvas. Because all that silence is covered by those deafening sounds my brush strokes are shaking because of everyone else’s pulse.

 

This poem is about: 
Me
Our world
Poetry Terms Demonstrated: 

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