Paint With Mental Strokes

All we paint with mental strokes
becomes a self-portrait.
The grand murals on life's walls in us originate.

Through many observations
we strengthen every trait.
The valued things reinforce and then accentuate.

We are authors of our dreams
when asleep and awake.
No one can live in our heads absent our own intake.

What in others we reject
in self we don't abate.
Emotion charged behavior our defenses equate.

We are held by all we love
as well as all we hate.
What attracts or repels us will with self correlate.

Flame or ice runs in our veins
and moodiness connate.
Mirrored images appear from what we inculcate.

What we see is in the mind
and not outside the gate.
Perception is projection: a parallel comate.