“Internal Easel” is a poem from a writing workshop I led in October 2020 in which I had to use “Mars, Henry, hairy, table, job, heart, and thing.” On the one hand, the internal easel refers to the fact that an easel is used as “a frame to support or hold something” that can be an artist’s canvas but also a portrait of a couple. It is internal as well as the soul’s longing to find that significant person and spend memorable moments with him/her. On the other hand, the closest meter of the poem is the iambic pentameter, and a pentameter in Greek and Latin verse is of two halves each of two feet and a long syllable: the “other half” usually means one’s partner in life… The poem speaks about the secret feelings that an artist has towards probably a friend or someone who should not be in her life as a partner. Use your imagination spiced with some humor. ???

Internal Easel

Living room, me sipping coffee on the table,
focused eyes on my scattered painting blocks,
two easels shoulder some rebellious cables,
stretched canvas lay to meet my gentle strokes.

I’ve to draw an empty storage unit, that of Henry Ford.
High pigments, oils, and fluids heartbeat on my board,
new watercolors too, the best I found in the artist’s shop,
creatively inspired, I assume it: I’ll submit the perfect job.

Before I start to brush full-bodied colors,
I put some paint inside the wooden “thing,”
prepare painting tools like knives and cutters,
adjust hand-sanded beechwood with a string.

The workplace is set up: art begins.

Half-sketched the painting, I drop my Mars Lumograph,
my internal easel keeps drawing another photograph:
“hairy legs on a random table” now the time disable,
and colors rush in veins, making heart and head unstable.

Work is paused: the artist thinks.

***
Conclusion: pick up well your visual stimulations,
internal easels corrupt the leading art of situations.