The Twisted Hues of Survival

Her smile was crooked,
She had been dead awhile.

     -Frieda Hughes from: Thief
"There is always hope,"
we whisper to ourselves
lying once again.

She painted crimson
amber and shades of blue
deepest indigo

you hear these colors
in the breezes of her voice
the tempest of her verse.

Shadowed in the
twisted hues of survival
she never knew why

her mother left her
in misty layers of air
the blue-gray haze.

But morning came
in acrylic brushstrokes
and she painted

pale stone and silence
remembering her mother's flowers
her father's worst.

There is no art, no hope
only living and dying
in techno-chrome.