Splash It Clean

A Poem by Mike Goodwin

You see money, right there.

Beauty is complex

And beauty is simple

There’s beauty in ugly

And in judging the few.

But probably the many

I’d have to agree

Shadowing, crusting, insecurity.

Relax, missing all

In the rise and fall

Many-faced beauty

And its multi-directional call

It’s like the sun on the page

Of a five year old’s art

Yellow crayon contrasting the rest of the box,

Undeniably circular with horizontal rays

Jetting off in every which way.

It has a bright color

And simply shines out

No beginning or ending

In a circular rout,

And many faces, touching all of the land

Forwards and backwards

The spectrum it spans.

But, in the end I can’t count these numerous rays.

The artist deserves full; infinite praise.

And its mystery is, and simply is

And can’t be changed.

Insecurity from this identity

A fear for I,

And I assume for the land,

As I feel the rays with a figurative hand.

And yet another concept escapes from me.

I’m not trying to preach a philosophy

But, it’s there, and when I find it,

There is just so damn much behind it.

I don’t want to try and say anything above me, or ramble on about the stuff I always write about, like how I don’t know anything and how the mind is so vast. But, I feel like this shouldn’t get old, because there is so much yet to be told. I laugh when I naturally go to rhyme in a poem like that, like I just did. However, that is beside the point. Sometimes with my understandings, I can’t seem to move from my starting spot; I kind of poke and prod whenever I feel like it. This is good, but I guess it’s not great. It’s like I’m tired when I do this, and there’s just a fog in my mind. I just don’t know. Not a depressing kind of “not knowing” though, it’s a happy, wondering one. It’s called, “seeing when you are a human.” Yeah, I’ll coin that phrase. Here we go again. Does the not knowing make me weak? It can’t cause no one knows. I think. Does it put me on an edge? That edge of hitting a fine line; good, great, cohesive, strong, wonderfully exploratory, genius, breakthrough, revolutionary, necessary. This is what I hope. “Motivational necessity,” I guess you could call it. It would be difficult to be widely accepted when you are personally thin. This is the first time in a while. I guess this is beauty. Those rays, you know. Never know. Everything’s kind of cloudy at this level.