White as a sordid awakening
Hollow, shallow, swallows
Me like an aged cavern

When mother comes in
She is scared to find me
Pale and blue

The window is a hole
Curtains like bedraggled women
Clutch at themselves

She stumbles through a gathering
Of talkative charcoal
And pastel on the floor

Scattered and sallow
Turpentine twists in sweet sashes
Round and round her neck

She calls, wavering already
Diving obliquely through the sea
She reaches for me on the mattress

In the bookshelf,
Behind easels,  pallete
Beneath the bridge of the table

A thousand gales of hues blow
Ruffling a thousand shadows
Thousand murmurs decieve her

Into breathing relief.
I see her heart a flickering flame:
Waves of my deathlessness

Shove her around.
Mother, mother, come closer
I call from the lean wooden

Parapet of the canvas
I dance her about in the sky
Stroke the hair, as

She cries, holding my solidity
Thin, bony; her hands shake
Like factory floors

Rancid blooms of a stubborn faith
Scotch her oak-brown skin
And all the walls watch our show

Disintegration occurs
As she searches for me
Kicking clatter and dust around

I a pebble in the pebbles of me
She picks, examines, throws
Picks examines, throws

All while tumbling
Into into into the stench
Of my keen blue decay

Brushstroke, word, scream and plea
She takes all the noise along
Into the beautiful world

Gaunt, I crawl clawing out
I am monster now
And she is painted.