By Claire Brown Bower
Date: 9 July 2000

Self Portrait

Speaking gently she murmurs, parched lips once luscious, 
rounding syllables softly while wielding her brushes.
The hauntings have ruptured her once flawless face,
binding bloody, her body, to this sorrowful place. 

Canvas windows illumine her only true light 
'pon the oils and pastels seeking shape through the night.
Casting sadness and shade from a colorless palette,
stroking scenes of soiled centuries dripping thickly about it. 

She paints through the darkness, Hope's fallen frail poet. 
No eyes for her pageant and to none shall she show it. 
Then long after the chiming of Dusk's towers ring, 
she'll sleep, a pallid slumber, and to Death's masterpiece, cling.