Note From One Of Picasso's Demoiselles (Poetry)

Is this the way you paint me, Pablo? —
How you see inside me — sense the damage done?
Examination shows a jumble — what a freak show I’ve become —
the world rearranged what thoughts I had — my feelings —
old beliefs to which I’d clung
so stubbornly for far too long —
and what is left — what here remains of me
is an unnamed mess —
an almost cruel cartoon of who I was —
two eyes, a nose, a mouth — the same sad face
but in changed formation — redefined
and textured out of love’s distress.

You craft my image — draw me as you will —
distort my body — symbolize at whim
flesh translates emotion — paint as light as skin
and blue shadows harden angles —
cool geometries that test the joints
to pose themselves at odds —
unlikely limbs held in some frantic dance
a strange balletic vision of the mind
I’ve come to live in
where I can be all my selves or none —
curve deformed to cube —
strict biology undone.

I stand rigid in my own imagination
dazed by brushwork and the bold
crazy lyrics of your art —
you have made of me a creature half-believed —
the myth your oil anoints —
the primitive mask half-peeled
to layer every truth conceived with tone
across a body — intimate
just one time back in Barcelona
or maybe Paris dreamed me
a newborn shape — a shell
I could never hope to own.