A colored jumble of scratches—fixed
fast to my refrigerator
still menaces me daily
with its jagged uncertainties.
A shape without a form, the blue shadow
of no object,
some monochrome poem, a hungry ghost: gnawing
teeth and a brittle
whirlwind—a portrait of the artist
as a dead man.
Still, when I was small
like the hand
that drew this, I bet I
was blue, too.
But back then—solitude
felt huge.
Loneliness flowed cool. Alienation
was new.
Crude moods loomed,
thick and inarticulate,
less rich and complex;
but at least words like alien
only referred
to what I meant.
