29 October 2025
stoned, right?
a meteor
in every sky
is a meteorite
on every page
of this
romance
the fallen stone
being a fading
warmth
cezanne might have said
one is not a painter
until one has painted grey
though the stones
probably
didn’t sing
paint it paint it paint it
paint it grey
grey as day
paint it in the
unlimited number
of shades
required to
redesign civilisation
from the planettop
to the heart
(whichever’s
easier, like
glück’s sgraffito*
are revels
under the painttop
at night
her gracile mind
sucks
colour
from its
whirled while
dark crowds
wait
for sun)
* ‘Glück’s sgraffito’ refers to the vigorous and striking visual art practice of the 2020 Nobel Prize-winning poet Louise Glück, whose drawings during her youth (between ages 15 and 22, circa 1958–1965) employed the sgraffito technique. Glück would energetically scratch through or gouge the surface of paper, the technique of sgraffito — an Italian word meaning ‘to scratch’ — creating dynamic highlights and textures, and in some cases even excavating the paper’s surface itself. This intense physicality echoes the drama and introspective energy found in her poetry, demonstrating a connection between visual and written forms.