Look At This Beard

                Look at this beard.  I can wrap it about my head.  I can feel its hairy heartbeat and every pump sends rhythmic vibrations through my chin. My life is so intertwined with this beard that I feel to cut it would be to sever one of my own arteries.  At times I believe I may have been grown out of it.  I forget which one of us was created first.  This magnificent beard starts above my lip, saunters down along the edges to my chin, gathers its forces and marches down to the open air before my heart.  This is the first point I noticed in which it differs from the beards of others.  At this point it separates, goes in opposite directions and forms the most complete circle ever witnessed by man or beast.  The points where it separates and reforms are each accented by small clusters of white hair, flared and brilliant like dying stars.  The reason for this magnificent beast of my own nature would be unknown to all, including myself, if not for the fact that the beard has told me.  It may shock the faint-hearted of you to know that my beard speaks to me but it is not an unknown phenomena and can be substantiated by most credible scientists.  This beard is from me and of me and although it was not shaped by me why could it not also be assumed that it would know my native tongue.  But it is not just my speech that it has mastered.  This beard of mine has mastered language, communication, intuition, it philosophizes and theorizes, expounds prophecy and metaphysics.  If we walk through a forest it knows the Latin names of the fauna and flora.  It knows the deepest soul of every human, beast, bush, rock and root upon this earth.  Within my tangled facial nest rests every soul intertwined.  It is everything that hunts and everything that is hunted.  If not for the lack of flesh this circular marvel would bleed, cry, rejoice and feast!  I myself have no special abilities, no outstanding talents, yet this gift and burden are mine alone to endure.  I carry upon my face the whole of the universe.  Heavy on my mind and my chin grows this solitary and unique creation and I sit still, afraid to move, gifted and cursed as the keeper of it all.

                                                    -Steven Suiter

My Soul

If I were to show you my soul

I am fairly certain that you would hate me for it

It would be laid on in a thick clump, huge dripping masses of crimson and burgundy smeared crudely with a palette knife by an untrained hand

It may lead your eyes in an almost endless line of matte black streaks until the brush runs dry and each feathered hair struggles to hold on and finally lets go of its last drop in a fit of panic

My soul weeps runny trails of blue that create uneven and zigzagging paths for the moss and leafy greens that follow

I spilled a bit of coffee on this part in the corner and my soul absorbed it before I was able to clean it up

At first I had been angry, upset at my carelessness, but i have since gotten used to it being there and at times I even enjoy the dark brown stain that it has left

My soul glows with yellow highlights in just the right spots before being swallowed in its deep chasms of hungry shadow

and each time is reborn as a white canvas stapled to cheap and jagged pieces of wood

So I think that it would be best if I just didn't show it to you.

"Littera Scripta Manet"

The written word remains

Acrylic on canvas