Flesh canvas

Take this fragile flesh canvas with its rips, and tears, and holes,

its landscape's etched with memories, and portraits of a soul

Light pencilled sketches of expectations and designs,

smears of my frustrations where i've gone outside the lines

Bursts of splattered colour for joy has had a liberal hand, 

streaks where teardrops ran their course, and scorched where angers fanned

Loss has left some ragged holes, paint and love have filled their share

An easel made of bones to hold a work beyond compare 

Sometimes the lines are precise, whilst at others rushed in haste,

but never another's brushstroke for that not within my taste

A lifetime of strokes and scribbles, and a picture slowly grows

A portait for life's mantelpiece, a taoist work of ebbs and flows

But still the works unfinished, and the end yet out of sight,

for i hope to face each dawning day with a canvas blank and white