Layer the Layers

slather scrape slash erase
cover to discover

some say Picasso viewed it
as economy of material

some watched a tired Richter
silently drag thick and thin

down the canvas
long violent ribbons of color

pull after pull after pull
perhaps a technique to hide

the histories
to repurpose regrets

yet isn’t reality
in the colored underlay

the push pull of light
like love like pain like life

one’s abstracted glimpse
of what lays silent within

a way to light up
the skin under the skin.