New poem

I finally went to the Art Museum here. I don't know much about art but I know what I like, as far as that goes...

Chagall's Blues
++++++++++++++++++

tonight
as i lay down
i saw Chagall's blues
wash over me.
and i thought to myself
"we are all made of art."
even you,
who first taught me
how to see.

everywhere you touched me
were streaks of color.
red, when you were happy.
and a terrible and condemning beige,
when you were not.
and, at night.
we swam together
in a room the color of Chagall.

for over half a decade,
these colors have been on my skin.
what do you do
when you realize you are somebody else's masterpiece?

today, i saw that
i am a different color inside
and i got back a bit of that canvas
which was always mine to begin with.

i loved the portrait we made
in our time.
Stark, bold, vivid -
like Lautrec's whores.

but, in my old age,
i've gone Monet-soft
with Van Gogh's blurred edges.
it would probably seem to you derivative,
uninventive, even.
but it's inhabitable
and easy for the amateur to understand.
and it's solely my own.

tonight,
with Chagall's windows rising slowly
out of my chest,
i can see it all so clear.
we're the same, you see,
these windows and i.
we both let in
a different kind of light.