Draft One: Poster Child

And then there were posters on the wall
exhorting twelve dollars prismatically
--but, only with a personal sort of palette.

Like a chin-line or father's nose,
the unfurled rectangled lines
adding up aesthetically, almost,

just almost as if to say
I know, I know you,
it's okay on these walls enclosing:

plywood furniture, a person, and an estate of ideals.
Each one constructed from the pulp
of some mashed up distant forest branching

like a family of guidelines and pretenses
to buy posters for some walls.
Every confining wall, at least,

the walls that'd otherwise be blank
and empty or worse than empty:
the walls with one unchanging color.

Like a leaf that never figured it was autumn,
like a branch that forgot to shed
or a forest unwilling to explode.

And then what? Frozen roots
destined to shrivel without
the persistent sky-born flames;

thick walk-around trunks to climb
collapsing into gray until no one remembered.
Did anyone even know before?

And the room expanded under the weight
of expression and knowledge and colors,
colors a person could inhabit

and grow. Colored in like a coloring book
numbered in by the walls that sprouted posters.
Filled in by twelve dollars at the mall.

Right now I feel like this is my opus. At this moment I am wholly proud. These moments have a way of deserting me though.