Perfecting Perfect

Perfecting Perfect

by Zachoia Cooper (age 16)

Paper is perfect when paper is new.   

Paper is perfect when it is pure white.

Soon I will cover it with red and blue,

Cut it or fold it or drench it with glue

Paper is perfect before a pen writes.  

Paper, foreboding, is so very clean. 

Paper, forbidding a streak or a scar.

Paper, so precious, is hard to demean.

Has finer spectacle ever been seen? 

Paper’s strict beauty is complex to mar. 

Paper’s blank surface is the perfect slate.

Chronicles, paintings, and pictures emerge.

Hands can construct what their bright minds create

Luminous paint speaks or cursive narrates

Whatever I dream of, whatever my urge. 

Paper is perfect when tearing apart,

White is besmirched, for the paint colors run.

Simple beginnings mature into art.

As long as the scratchings are shaped from the heart 

Paper is perfect in what it’s become.

(assignment for Polliwog Poetry Lessons)


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