Peculiar Poem

The vivid and the peculiar
Vie to take up space in the paint,
Like colors daubed on a palette,

Like two huge basketball centers
Jockeying to get the ball first.
Which of them wins this possession?

Let the vivid be dread, and let
The peculiar be indifference.
Let the vivid look like dark mold

With fuzzy, spore-dust-heavy threads
Reaching out to latch on your eyes,
To spawn within your moist vision

Of this world as a mass-produced
Jungle of colorful terrors,
A bit too much glow in their dark,

Conversely, the peculiar doubts
There’s ever a reason to dread.
For the peculiar, the sunlight,

White, is as vivid as it gets.
How ever could the peculiar
Win the battle for the bright paint,

Disinterested in the outcome
Of the context, in any case?
Ah, but you see how it gathers,

All that peculiar indifference?
Fill the canvas with that, with not
Exactly the original—

The bleached, mass-produced shade of pale—
But something subtler, something dread
Can never, ever dread itself,

A meaningless shift in context,
A just slightly whiter canvas.
Dread will sally forth, confident

It’s got an angle on the paint,
But the background, the existence
Of the art itself, the contest

Is now wholly peculiar—
Peculiar is the indifferent
Ground against which the vivid splays

Some splashy story of nothing
Much at all, a few dashing lines
On the untroubled Face of God.