My vain hope of escape from the cave of self was duly thwarted. The truckload of hubris that I brought with me was deposited on my doorstep and I was trapped inside the layers of pigment. It was unimaginable that I had imagined that a creative act could absolve me from the sins of disenchantment and faithless love.

Now I was entangled in a glistening web of visual deceit. Up to my neck in a swamp of possibilities I reached out for my palette like a drowning man for an oar. Was it only for the visceral thrill or was I guided by a greater power?

I was sucked into colour like a drunkard into gin, dripping precious paint on the floor of my addiction. The ungainly lump of flesh and bone that held the brush was a misfit that crouched over the streaks of magenta, strokes of flesh and spatters of dorian gray. My eyes beheld the ugly beautiful face that lurks inside the mind.

I was not responsible for my actions in those dark hours of midday when all is light except inside. This canopy of body is an unknown robot of desire. Who can say why that fleck of yellow is there and not there? Not I.