48(Cd)
is a highly toxic, poisonous and soft metal used in many production processes, but mainly mixed with Sulfate to make the color yellow.

metal is suppose to be tough.
Not malleable, ductile and easily cut.
Polished to a lustrous finish but will corrode in due time.

I am Cadmium;
soft and easily cut, my finish does not last, I can be poisonous if you don't filter me.
But if you mix me correctly, I am a beautiful Yellow.

Riding down the rapidly declining *****
on the bright, soft-water day,
I imagine myself as nothing more than an animal
falling down a waterfall into a lake clear and crisp.
The wheels of my bike turn rapidly
like the a propeller of a plane,
just as powerful
and just as dangerous if I fall,
but only to me.
Catching the sea salt breeze
my blonde, sun bleached hair flies as if
it were flying on seagulls wings.
I am a cadmium yellow blur on a painting,
moving much too fast to be captured and depicted accurately.
I ride until the end of my ***** this way,
finishing strong with out a hint of regret.

Yellow, Cadmium, Aureolin, Lemon
It's the shades of your true nature.

Sheen, Spring Bud, Bitter Lime, Lime
It's the other side of you.

The day when I met you is Lemon,
Drowning me into the watery trap of yours
Lemon in Water, that's how you cast a spell on me.

Sour, it's the taste of waiting for you
Bitter, you left me rotten and lost
Sweet, it's when you smile to me
Refreshing, the reason why I look forward toward tomorrow
Plain, the black truth behind your kindness
Sour+Bitter, the days when I must forget about you

Lemon, Lime,
I got addicted to your freshness,

Lime, Lemon
You stir me up like a juice,

Lime
Those dream felt so real

Lemon
I should've known, that I never belong to you, ever.

I want to say being with you was like coming home, but that seems so over-done.
Despite the truth it holds.
I think maybe I’ll try and speak your language. Because being with you was homemade paint.
Mason jars lining shelves, oil and pigment and a palette of your own creation.
When you ran your fingers over my skin it wasn’t Cadmium red, no, it was more like, the setting of the sun after a hot summers day. Orange so deep it feels like you are going to fall into it. Not Permanent or Transparent. No, it was like a fire, warm and so, so bright. Like the world around me had gone up in flames and I was happy to burn with it.
Or when you laughed, the air lit up like a sunflower. Not Hansa or Nickel or Indian yellow. Think something between gold and the shade of a lemon. Honey, sweet and sticky.
And my heart twisted and turned inside my chest, adapting to the mix of colors, oil dripping into my veins.
When you smiled. God, when you smiled. The world seemed to converge. Nothing made sense. I was spinning in a circle in the middle of a carnival. Too much to process. Stained glass windows at noon, playing out across the floors of the church. Iridescent and never ending.
The only thing that brought me back was your brush hitting the canvas, your voice calling out to me, and then it was green, so much green, like a perfectly polished suburban yard and standing beneath a canopy of trees in August, looking up and up until the sun forces your gaze to turn, and the green depression glass that sits pretty on my mother’s bookshelf. I think of light dancing off an emerald ring, not Viridian or Olive or Sap. Nothing you can find in a crafts store. Nothing that can be manufactured. Only that which can be bended and built from your own mind and hands.
And then you were gone. Twice now you’ve left. And it is blue like I have never known. So dark it feels black if I dwell for too long. Richer than Idanthrone, not quite Prussian. Have you ever gone to the ocean at night, just before a storm hits the coast? Or, went up into the country, where the stars illuminate the world around you and the sky is spread out like a blanket above you? Not Cobalt or Cerulean. No, this blue is only something you can make. Something you’ve brought with you. With your sunflowers and your sunsets and your stained glass.
We talked about the way colors can change when they’re next to each other, next to something similar or vastly different. The way the depths can be altered, and just a little more oil can thin it out.
There is nothing to compare anymore.
Just blue. So blue I can’t breathe. So blue my fingers shake and my head aches.
The blue is okay when you’re there. When you’ve laid your palette out before me, when your canvas is full, and beautiful, and I can’t look away. But now, you’ve taken every other color with you, and left me with blue.
Not store bought or easily replaced.
Your blue. From your words and your touch and your voice.
I thought I saw you the other day, for just a moment, the world exploded around me. All the color I thought I’d never see again. A storm so rich with color, I could have gone blind.
But you’re still gone. And I’m still blue.

The wolves did not just stalk quietly through cadmium woods.
Their teeth grew madder and rose from each others throats.
The tigers did not just sleep on mossy slopes,
they colored the afternoon fushia and indigo from caladon heights,
The dragon with its terrible emerald tail and ruby glare,
did not merely threaten to incinerate everything around it.
Spiders prepare a grave.
This thing in a binding tomb.
A multitude of flames, a million orange and blue....
Tears cremating the past.
A burning snow falling everywhere.
When the darkest angel of all, sits at last upon my chest,
permanently enfolding me in its radiant wings....
A creature without a voice,
A voice without a name.
As immortal as mi life,
come here at long last to summon the wind.


© Crystal Erickson

we were the bomb squad
a tribe of children in
plastic crash  helmets
pillows tied on
to protect our insides
holding hands to keep
from feeling lost and alone

we were the bomb squad
living like thieves in cardboard caves
beside the mine fields
hidden beneath beds of poppies
decoy explosions
in cadmium red *****
tender tongues
like kittens licking
the insides
of trembling thighs

we were the bomb squad
mucous membranes and bones
tick tock throats and veins
popped in the pyre
stomach bile and marrow
all up in the same smoke
as something that was
once smooth and sentient

we were the bomb squad
we found no time for any flag
nothing to do with kings
or foreign countries
just the knowledge
of not having known anything before

late last night i walked alone along the desolate shore
of Monet’s pond at Giverny the pale moon
sometimes obscured by impasto clouds
the waterlilies those treacherous waterlilies
screaming in agony
Saskia, Rembrandt’s wife, was there
naked and weeping, her hair and body
wet and slimy draped in orange pond algae
Cezanne crouched nearby cursing and slashing canvases
with a butcher’s knife before tossing them into a fire
when he finished he made fierce love to Saskia
who sang an old Dutch love song as he did
Rembrandt was in deep conversation with Monet
in a puddle of passing moonlight
and didn’t seemed to mind, anything
to stop her endless wailing I heard him say
Monet says Titian’s mistress is now a mermaid
who lives beneath my betraying waterlilies which is why they cry
and why I keep painting them no one makes love like her
just look at Titian’s Madonnas
Van Gogh stumbles in from a dung-filled alley, bleeding badly
from the bullet wound in his abdomen,
where the rich kids from Auvers tormented and shot him
just for the fun of it, Vermeer bankrupt and gaunt
steps from behind a tree and asks if it’s suicide or the new art
Vincent says let the people believe that tragic ending
it’s a dramatic final brushstroke to my life even if untrue
but I love the blackbirds and my wheat fields and blue irises
way too much to spill my guts on them cadmium red maybe
my left ear lobe maybe but never my guts
where’s de Kooning anyhow he yells the *******
borrowed my paintbrush and never returned it
now I’ll have to paint with the tongue of Gauguin’s old shoe
Caravaggio floats by face up caressed by the wet palms of the weeping lilies
he’s burning up with fever delirious screaming
where’s my ship where’s my ship
they’re all on the ship my paintings
my paintings will redeem me the Pope knows
I only killed one man
Monet strokes his beard like Moses Rembrandt
says it happens to all of us even our wives and
mistresses perhaps it’s the lead in our *****
it’s not suicide it’s not homicide it’s the madness of living too much
Rothko appears, a translucent ghost inside a mist salving his slashed wrist
with Monet’s pond water Mark washing washing
the healing water the Giverny water dancing with pran the giver of life
that’s what Monet was painting at the end
using the palette from the other side
pran transmitted through the wailing
of the waterlilies the siren’s song
that lures artists to their death
and then washes them clean for the next go
to pick up where they left off, alone
with his whiskey bottle Jackson ******* hurls paint clots
at Rembrandt’s Still Life with Peacocks
those two dead peacocks they’re all dead peacocks
floating belly up under Monet’s footbridge
all the color gone from their plumage
drink the water Jackson or better yet
let Cezanne rip out your diseased liver
and wrap it carefully in a weeping waterlily
and float it out into the middle of the pond
where the forgiving moonlight and the mermaids
and Monet’s eyes now dim with cataracts
can help it filter out the poison of living
too much and then you too Jackson
will make painterly love to Saskia and she will
daub your diseased body in Titian’s blue
and her husband’s gold and Vincent’s sunflower yellows
and send you back into the world
where you will continue to splash us all  
as we lie flat on the ground hands and legs intertwined
our faces and bodies your canvas more willing than ever
Jackson, you’ll turn us into a unified field of smashed hues not just from here but from where you stand one foot on the other side
get us all raging drunk Jackson in that myth you longed for
splatter us in the tinted mess of the mystery you raged at
and had to settle for drunken oblivion instead
drink deeply the mystic-hued water of Giverny
Vincent and Paul and Mark and Jackson
and when you come back
spit it out on our parched souls

I want to live life in a Bob Ross painting
With serene monstrous mountains far off in the distance
The peak half covered by happy little clouds
A happy little tree and it’s many brothers and sisters
Blanketing the landscape of light snowfall and growing bushes
A small cabin bathed in melting snow rests comfortably
Next to a thawing private lake lit by a cadmium yellow sun

This is where I want to live
Swarmed in colors of titanium white,
Phthalo green and blue,
Midnight black,
Alizarin crimson,
And Indian yellow

Where there are no mistakes
Only happy accidents
Where the big decisions
And the tests of courage are
Where the next tree will go

In a Bob Ross painting
I could live peacefully

Naples yellow
Prussian blue
Burnt umber
Cadmium Red Deep
Napthol Red
Quinacridone
Phtalocionine Blue and Green
Portrait Pink Light
Yellow Oxide
Raw Sienna

Can you make a painting without these?

I'm still waiting for you to kiss me
With those crimson lips so smooth.
And I'm still waiting for us to be alone
When the pain in your bright eyes can be soothed.

I'm still waiting for you to get help
For the carmine rivers that you trace.
And I'm still waiting for a reason why
You broke the promise you put in place.

I'm still waiting for my head to stop spinning
The rose hairclip means I see you down the hall.
And I'm still waiting to tell when my stomach flips
If it's good or not at all.

I'm still waiting for my logic to return
But love gives an alazarin tint to every drama.
And I'm still waiting for a chance to talk to you
But I seem to have bad karma.

I'm still waiting for that hug you owe me
My ruby hair shoelace flopping in my eyes
And I'm still waiting to be the tall one of the pair
As I try to move on, part of me dies.

I'm still waiting for that movie date we planned
And the ketchup coloured earring you wear in the left ear
And I'm still waiting to dance and twirl you round
In my arms I could hold you near.

I'm still waiting for when you blush
Vermillion as insults are thrown across the street
And I'm still waiting for the chance to set that right
Remmembering you defending me in the stifling heat.

I'm still waiting for the time to tell you
How much you're in my thoughts
And I'm still waiting for your birthday so I can gift
The cadmium sketchbook that I bought

I'm still waiting for the coral pain to stop in my heart
It's there for you, of that I have no doubt
And I'm still waiting for the laughter to return
To my life when we sort this out

I'm still waiting for the trip to the coast
The bergundy viking boat alight
And I'm still waiting for what will never be
But then again, it might.

Cadmium*

You took a bullet to my heart
made of titanium,
poisoned my blood with deceit and lies,
filled my lungs with cadmium.

How can I not see your reflection
in any one who speaks your same words?
I try to forget of your mistakes
but mirrors only amplify the hurt.

I have given up on searching for your heart,
hope and want are a self destructing team;
you've never once apologised,
I've had to settle for "I'm sorry" in my dreams.

boy-flesh,
death rattle,
I arise out of youth
doused in kerosene.

I bask in the sun
like an old farm
cat, illuminated--
cadmium yellow.

's favorite meal is not children as you may expect
it is old people, the elderly near death
they taste better to him
he fantasizes their whole lives with every bite

whose heart like bottles or ransom clinks against
itself eating the useless parts of its own stomach
rotors of bone hum about revenge
the earth clones pale enigmatic cyanide

my spawn sweat bourbon and bleed sweet milk
I'm the Tower
Look Look
let us hold eachother here until the dark blossoms

into an invisible canine snarl
crushed by feathers at a
tomb-encrusted countryside
wax swans bleed from

their eyes and bulls inside run
in circles around ancient ice prisons

Look a clock
century weary mariners
gape in disbelief
at a yawning dawn
of cadmium
on the tongue of
a bristling free roaming
continent of
gothic salt