Self at 23 - 2nd ever oil painting I think.

By Paul D Robertson

Oils, 90 x 65 cms.

For Sale

One of my earliest oils - from about when I started painting.

I had long hair and was an alcoholic. I still am, I supopose, but have not had a drink since 98. I was very unhappy, but I keep such images around.

They still have power for me.

Time for us and time for me and whirr and click once more.

Found my pen again, chewed lid, pragmatism in black and xylene, time now for my clockwork to wind down and slow but twitching twitchy.
Old leather smell with a cup of baking soda and a pair of chewed lips, quiet and wet.

I have a handful of lizard skin and a pocket spare, dry now despite the humidity and humility and lacing (stitched?) with cowardice.
Whirr and click and spin, time for stubble and sandy eyes and wet legs, maybe coffee and maybe company, this last unheard.
Loneliness and boiling energy not even my quizzical state, not really. CDs are all unfitted now, I have to find a new expression to face (reaching into barrows, casements disappear dark and rich. Sharp movements and smooth skin furrowed into velvet. Shiny and vigorous, fitted out with cries and appropriate lustre.)
Sweet tonight, hot on their healing and fevered up and round with smiles that seem to find the right muscles to poke, and even like me, they might.

Boom and twist this time though whirring and clicking and sinking in teeth and she says that she likes my scars though not where they sprung and wrenched from (that part mine nearly clasped and nearly held close and rocked like a sleeping child a puppy an adulteress. Fenced though peeping and flashing onto the page now and that other now, then.)
I can’t remember a time when panic didn’t finger my sight and there wasn’t a hole where cold things and rat bites spoke, and tired was all I was among other things.
(Nine o’clock tick tock tick tock, how long is it how long have I got?)
But looming out at me like a loon or an argument with myself is this.
And I do need her to sing to me, I do need her to come down into the street. And though she didn’t trace my scars with her fingers, she kissed them as if they weren’t purple with violence and sucked up into themselves like the memories that hold them, and I think that I believe her and not me.
She sounds like she means it more.
Click and whirr, boom and spin, with gentleness and quilts and eyes with honeysuckle edges.

Cadence with her head cocked to one side in limping rhythms and skin that smells like cinnamon only better, better than that.