Bad Paint Job — by Gill Eapen
The garden appeared like a bad paint job
Green, red, grey and purple
Assembled from a dirty palette
For dirtier eyes to critique
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Short trees littering the artificial edges
With branches like deformed human limbs
Red garden pots circling the pond
As if somebody placed them in a circle
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Short men in front and even shorter ones in the rear
They appeared lifeless, almost like in real life
Some bending down and others standing up
The assembly looked irrelevant for the painting
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Squirrels running up the tree and the cat deeply observant
Red and white fish in the pond, made dirty by nature
Occasional leaves fell in the gentle breeze
Till all of them were wiped out of by the monsoon swoon
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Tall coconut tress swung back and forth
Displaying greenery on top like a bad haircut
They looked grotesquely artificial
Like electricity generating equipment and accessories
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If one looks closely, one could see bugs, bees, and mosquitoes
The details were exquisite, the result mediocre
The brush strokes varied in perplexing and stochastic ways
As if it was created by many not one
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The path was painted brown to contrast the encircling green
With pebbles, sand, and broken rock
It seems to lead nowhere, a repeating maze
Unreal and not believable
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The cleaning woman painted in the middle of the path
Almost gave life to the ordinary attempt
But then her shadow looked dark and slanted
The Sun was positioned incorrectly it seems
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A lonely bird on the tree branch
As if it was an afterthought
It was a colorful mess
The palette was full and the paint cheap
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No snakes in the tropical depiction of reality
They were left to the imagination
They may be near but not for the eyes
What you see may not be real
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If one spends time in front, more details may emerge
Such as mangoes and nameless fruits
On trees painted arbitrarily all around
In contrast to real life where they are lined neatly by men
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Blue skies with white clouds on top
On a tropical nightmare where the rain never stops
One can’t ask questions nor try to critique based on reality
It is the artist’s discretion, no less
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To make matters worse, there were signs of a metal bird
Flying high in the middle of the unlikely blue sky
Dark clouds and downpour may have been more real
But reality is typically unreal
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A stream at a distance, almost outside the picture frame
Barely visible to the naked eye or thoughts
Clarifications could be sought but unlikely to be delivered
Is the painter unaware of the approaching floods?
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No mountains or the sea
In the context set in the middle of both
Perhaps they were obscured by trees
Or just missed by the thoughtless creator
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A flower ring in the porch of an attempted house on the side
Intricate patterns with no life
Looked like they were made by women with no taste
Or was it the painter trying to make the women look bad?
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The house appeared old and weak
Time is flowing but there is an end
Only fools celebrate as the future gets ready to crumble
The house will be gone but the garden shall remain
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No sign of human pain just the enveloping tears
No cries, no laughs, and no analytical thoughts
No sign of the impending doom
Art is never real
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The garden in front is clearly a bad painting
Artificial and lacking consistency
Noisy and nearly non-replicable
God is a bad painter, so are her disciples