The Creep Factor

Sometimes you work and work,
and this is all you get
and also how you feel:
a symbol of discouragement,
a death's head grimace
whose only redeeming feature
is what one gallery official I know
loves to call
"The Creep Factor."
It IS creepy,
this relentless experimentation with no result;
and some part of me just wants do drop it;
to run away,
screaming in frustration.
Perhaps this horrid gray and pockmarked period
between imagined and complete
when nothing emerges or seems to work right
served as the origin
of Edvard Munch's Scream --
Surely it's a feeling
we artists all know well!


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