I was born of heartache,

the timeless tug of Erato

pulling mind and soul

to pieces like a supernova

of burning orange and yellow

sunset light

like the colorful explosion

of Rothko giving birth

to a cousin, a painting

of vivid fiery life,

and I stretched arms of words

and let out a cry of imagery,

coursing ink like blood

between the spaces in the page

that hold my bones,

my poetic existence.

My mother is immortal;

Erato, a Greek goddess,

a muse who grants inspiration

to those who seek her.

She spreads wings of gold

across the streaks of sunrise,

and grabs my childlike hand

as she soars beyond the heavens

to the stars that scatter the galaxies

with white bursts of nuclear inspiration,

shock waves of ecstatic art,

and supernovas of rainbow explosion,

like colors splattered across a canvas,

words spread across a page.

Father is sad with life’s reality.

Heavy eyes and weak knees,

the burdens of work and paying bills,

one foot in the trenches,

the other in the grave,

mind longing for Erato

and her fleeting visits

after a single night explosion.

But early in the morning’s darkness,

when everything is quiet

and shadows stir like thoughts

in a dusty mind of cobwebs,

he writes, painting pictures with words,

creating worlds of heroes and monsters

vivid in the sunlight of imagination.

He’s the one who’s raising me;

he planted the seed

and now is watering

with moments of colorful inspiration,

the fleeting song of life

floating in breezes,

gliding through rainbows,

spreading through sunsets.

Quaking and wavering,

I left the nest a hatchling.

Like a newborn turtle, I searched;

only father was there to see me

with sunken eyes and a weighted heart,

and I waddled away from him

into the darkness,

into the tunnel

where I wasn’t sure to look

for the light at the end: that sunset

spreading across the sky

with muddled wings of clouds,

brushstrokes of pink, orange and yellow,

or the light of an oncoming train:

that metallic screech of wheels against track,

that howling horn,

and the blazing white light

that foretells the pain.

I opened my mouth for the first time

and spoke with my mother’s voice,

the voice of Erato the Muse,

words like golden raindrops

sparkling with the diamond tears

of my father left alone in the night.

They were words of life and death

that carried the sweet sounds of angels

and the blues guitars of hell,

the rattle of a train escaping into the night,

the beat of drums

as naked bodies dance around a bonfire,

the quiet hum of crickets,

the howl of a wolf

gazing at the moon.