Can anyone tell me what this poem by ee cummings is trying to say?

Question:

Can anyone tell me what this poem by ee cummings is trying to say?

My mind is

my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings.

EE Cummings

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

Well I wasn't familiar with it but think I can hazard a pretty good guess.

Cummings compares the mind to a unformed sculptor's block, or something like it, "hitting and chipping with...fatal tools." The senses, touch, taste, etc., are forming a blank slate (tabula rosa) into a feeling human being - "I perform squirms of chrome and ex/-ecute strides of cobalt" - the speaker becomes a struggling mass of things that one wouldn't think would move easily - metal and rock. "Feel that i cleverly am being altered" introduces a note of paranoia - whatever the speaker is becoming is beyond his grasp in some way, but nevertheless the speaker is really only becoming "myself," which juxtaposes individuality and determinism. The last line is the real kicker - "lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowing" are like green dreams sleeping furiously - they might be somehow imaginable but certainly not real. What does it mean to color speech and sound? Perhaps something like the fact that we humans, masses of flesh, unconscious bones etc. (like cobalt or chrome) somehow manage to have feelings and experiences that can be personally very deep. This is my first reading of this poem, but I think it's pretty defensible.