How love alters the human face the radiant smile and the alertness of the eyes love hungers for love and is never satisfied until love is returned notice how the whole of the body is involved in the expression of love it may be in the posture the stance of the hips or the angle at which the head is held it may be in the hands that gesture unconsciously to underline the love it may be in the lips pursed and as though poised to give a kiss at a moment’s notice because it is ever eager to express itself in the simplest most tender ways the outward signs of inner feelings but it’s the face above all that alters when love is present the face is often an invitation and always an announcement when love is present
It’s burlesque a light show everything you want to see before your very eyes but hidden behind the flourish of coloured fans painting is about nudity revelation the laying bare of physical perception its beauty lies in its truth how the light unravels as the knots of the spectrum are untied and the gown of discretion slips to the floor
painters pore over their canvases drooling fingertips delighting in the rough textures and smooth lines— it turns them on : beneath the pigments the breasts buttocks thighs and a desire to penetrate to have knowledge of the flesh and blood Tancredi’s composition is an enticing tease that no retina can resist
You never know when a poem might happen it doesn’t take much the sun may suddenly appear through the dull grey of the day and lift your spirits above the parapet ready to take the risk of being shot down it may be a text from the woman you love which reads simply
I LOVE YOU
out of the blue just as you were going about your daily minding your own and you think to yourself someday I’m going to get that girl to put it in writing it’s that simple blood simple
Do you see what I see notes for a landscape a shore and a beach and a river and a sky a path to enlightenment a horizon viewed from a cliff top waves perceptible in the brushstrokes mimicking the tensions in the earth’s crust and in all our relationships abstract cartography of the soul
it took a human body to paint this to select the colours and to control the brush it took human energy to express this to execute this rather than accept the docility of a pacified environment in which nature sits tamely on a canvas
I came here scriptless Willem and I searched high and low for love I am an accident of birth whatever is concealed in this composition will be revealed in due course at its heart is the illumination of sunlight and a brightness that never fades the joy we associate with the loving application of human vitality everywhere apparent the long sinews of genitive muscle
it could be a walk on a Sunday afternoon or a three-penny opera in which we all appear and notice a perfectly positioned pinmark in each of the corners no abstract could ever be so inexhaustibly calculated which is why I am not a painter
A quiet house and from a window barren black trees waiting to bud no coral or turquoise sky just the dull grey of lingering winter
Yesterday by the railway cutting a pigeon tossing dead leaves aside one by one with its beak scavenging for food under the mulch
But beauty conserved in the mind the thought of love that is not a perfection much more a process a necessary moving towards another in which kindness and understanding are unlimited in the give and take of adjustment or accommodation fingers that run through printed silk the blue midnight of a summer shared Life is the fugitive and we pursue it with a passion : to hold her and know the intimacy of her breast and to have seen her in times of joy and ecstasy and in sorrow each kiss a blessing each word a consolation
Love is neither a posture nor a demand it sets no agenda and comes at no price as long as it is true and mindful Her hands reach out to me mine to her and in that grasp in that physical understanding our affections are enshrined our hearts set on a course against the destructive surge of time and for ourselves we needs must make a quiet paradise in the house of our heaven
One day we will remember that unblemished time when we strolled along these canals peered into the calm waters drenched with darkness and light our shadows our reflections dissolving as we went
What lasts forever if not your beauty your ageless smile bright flesh of starlight golden threads of hair beneath a dark fur-trimmed hood
Hand in hand the hours passed the days and nights in a simplicity of love and the unrest of love’s wild lips
johnjosephlyons 