The artist sits at his oak-wood desk

the neatly polished slick brown met

by the clean crystal white of the paper

as it yields beneath his delicate touch.

​

He folds with ease, creating hills

and valleys, dips and bends, a free-flow

river of artistic expression, contained

on this square he is turning into art.

​

He has done this a million times,

perfected his motion and movement;

he is as much a surgeon as an artist,

precision unyielding, perfection obligatory.

​

And yet, a pile of crumpled pieces

of art never given life sits in the corner

of his room, overflowing the neat

criss-cross mesh of his trash can.

​

His quest for perfection has killed

a thousand million would-be just-fine

pieces of art, which could have been

nurtured and given life to, too soon.

​

This is the price of perfection, the price

of sitting at a polished wooden desk

and sacrificing hours of your life

in search of enlightenment, art loss.

​

Many times his watching wife asked him

“why did you throw that one away?”

and without looking at her, he took a new piece,

and simply said to her “it wasn’t good enough”.

​

He has driven himself past breaking point

accepting and pushing for only perfection,

and now alone in the room, at his polished

oak wood desk, he sits folding paper.

​

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