An Abstract Artist Named Walls

The woman in the lime suit
resembles a big bottle of Fresca.
Her male companion stares,
stunned by fifties memorabilia
mounted to wall as sculpture--
toasters, patent leather bags,
armless store dummies, Chevy bumpers--
all painted white. He tries to explain.

This work is about blandness, the numbing white bread
of material existence.

Secretly she thinks it’s all rather funny.
Like the next room, ablaze
ceiling to floor with a thousand colors,
hung with blank canvases.

Emptiness, the infinite sadness of alone
against the gaudy backdrop of the world.

She glances back as they walk through.
      
You know, she says,
I once knew a mortician called Earthman.