Mona Lisa

It takes twelve years to paint her smile.
Feel your own lips, read the Braille in their contours.
Pull ribbons of secrets from under your tongue.
Whisper them onto the canvas.

Feel your own lips for the Braille in their contours.
No one is looking; sneak and
whisper them onto the canvas,
disguise those ghosts of your kisses as paint.

No one is looking, you sneak.
Crown your lover with black tumbles of hair,
bequeath him with the ghosts of kisses in paint.
Go upstairs, and write love letters to the mirror.

Crown your lover with black tumbles of hair.
You did not invent this world;
go upstairs, and write hate mail to the mirror.
Paint your love like Morse code instead.

You did not invent this world.
You only dissect it, and catalog its entrails.
Paint your love like Morse code instead;
you do not wish to fire walk tonight.

You only dissect and catalog the world’s entrails
and give gifts of sketches and strange machines.
You do not wish to fire walk tonight;
let them stare at your sketches instead.

They have your sketches and strange machines.
You intend to recreate the world,
so let them stare at all those sketches instead.
Your first steps will not be that simple.

You intend to recreate the world.
It will take five hundred years.
Even your first step will not be that simple;
it takes twelve years to paint his smile.

Written 4/13/10
© 2010 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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This poem is the seventh one for NaPoWriMo 2010. I decided on another pantoum, this one about Leonardo DaVinci. I’m fascinated with him and he is considered to be the archetype of the Renaissance man, although this is probably an understatement. Oddly enough, he wasn’t as prolific of a painter as he was a sketcher and inventor, but I chose to focus on the Mona Lisa after reading somewhere that the portrait may have either been an a) modified self-portrait or b) a portrait of Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno (otherwise known as Salai), a pupil and possible lover of DaVinci’s. That’s the take I decided to use for this poem.

-Nicole

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