Why Painting is Like Geometry

At university in Music Theory I learned about mathematics.

Between binge drinking and finding my soul

I discovered the inevitable:

inspiration doesn’t become creation without fine tuning.

I bought a Dave Brubeck CD and listened while I studied

while I strove to write poems without counting syllables

while I ate two minute noodles and drank six packs of beer

while I tried to sleep to my roommate fucking

in time to beats of jazzed up fives

a coed from the second floor.

I memorised melodies and had to do equations

and questioned my vocation as would-be poet

because Take Five wasn’t a stroll down an alley

of garbage cans and scurvy cats, the woman in red

a hobo whistling, a man in a suit with an alto sax;

it was perfect numbers from fractions

with order and reason

and from it came rhythm and song.

I wanted to be that woman in red, that very sax

because I wanted to believe that magic lies within the muse

and the artist and the sound and the word and the pen.

I wanted to heed the creed of art for art’s sake.

I was eighteen.

I only just passed Music Theory

then ascended to drinking bourbon and cokes

lost my virginity at a party.

That boy dumped me in two week’s time

while the bourbon took turns with cheap red wine

and I wrote poems on life-til-now

while others took notes in Art 101

on why painting is like geometry.