yet I am drawn to you
fat naked clown or Buddha
rainbows-variations of orange
and blue, warm yet cool
radiate from your flab
as you pose within your orange box
defiantly laughing as though
daring me to turn my face away.
Your ugliness stands guard like
someone who knows
the joke's on him but still finds
it funny - the illusion of your geometry perhaps.
The cobalt blue behind you, the one I sense you
trying so hard to keep me seeing
is part of the orange square
that should make the shapes three-dimensional
except for the illusion of complimentry colors
and the you I suspect that wants
to fade into the background-black
and the flat line above that hovers
like a legend to a graph:
orange, black, red and blue.
If I were a mathematician who finds
comfort in explanation or,
God help me, your therapist
I might delude myself into believing
the clues are in the blues.
But I don't know you and though this
painting is not something I'd
hang in my living room,
there's something beautiful about you
as beautiful as courage
with a hint of self-loathing.
By Kathleen O'Donnell
