Pain is not beauty

Pain is not beauty

It is not a virtue

Stoicism is not noble

It is a smokescreen

Behind which

We hide

How we feel

About the progress

Of disintegration

Which began

With a slap to make us cry

When words were

Immaterial

And all we knew

About the outside

Swam before us

In the shadows

In sharp contrast

To the warmth

We left behind

On the inside.

How much we grow

Is a process

Of obliteration

Every truth

A discolouration

Of innocence

A splash of blood

On blank canvas

Ars longa vita Brevis

With every brushstroke

A picture revealed

Before and after

Unconcealed in extremis

A still life

A bowl of strange fruit

The pain of art

Sentimental kitsch

For misbelievers

Of higher conscience

Beheld in a starburst

Of disintegration

Before wisdom

Falls on fallow ground

And the death of life

As art

Is all we have

To show.