Picasso Girl

Everyone wonders about my email address. I am not gay. It comes from a poem I wrote.

The poem is one of my favorites. The inspiration comes from an Elvis Costello song, All This Useless Beauty. The same song inspired another one of my poems as well, but in particular this one. The idea of the main character in the song walking through the museum and reflecting on all the beauty, and what a waste it was, immediately attracted me.

PICASSO GIRL

The museum
light floods me a shower
florescence
white light vacuums
the colors into the
air and bleeds them
together into the colorless
rainbow of every color
a white noise that blinds with its
omniscience i
watch a
thousand dreams live and
die through their windows of
time hanging forever a frozen
endeavor
their immortal
flirtations dissected by the
light and the eyes and the
cutting remarks
almost forgotten in that formaldehyde
starkness a
Picasso Girl
winks like a one
eyed queen staring
out through the darkness
between her teeth an
eviscerating brightness
in the moment
of that smile a history
of jagged lips and tongues melts
around the edges
of my jaded gazes
to puncture the paintings hung behind my eyes
body parts collide
a siamese monster in flame
joined to a wintery profile
by elbows and teeth and lips
kissing knees
a closer vivisection
of her jigsaw perspectives and
i prick myself on the corners until
her colors bleed into me
the black lines that surround our
anatomies skew themselves on
the chemicals that act as our
emotions until
i gently rake my fingers
across those marble romances
carving from her icy emerald glances
a time statuesque
until i see the
Picasso Girl
frames a truth
and until
i learn to forget the
blank canvas of her lies
to remember
time always blinds
and only monuments
can be left behind


The idea of the Picasso Girl, immortalized askew, a beautiful mishmash of perspectives, haunts me. The idea that the object of our desire is not viewed in a platonic manner in all its perfection has been reinforced in all my relationships. We distort our view of the people we love by the very act of loving them.