In the Colors

Move the colors.

But they stop and go,

Not red or green or yellow.

No, no, they flow where colors never go.

Some darker stolen

Painted skies from haunted worlds

And go away and go away

How I wish they’d go away.

But the colors stay

And they have a weight

Because they’re not a shade;

They’re not a ghost, a specter or a sigh

Of wispy hues at all.

Move the colors, make then change,

From dark and deep and deeper gray.

Make the colors

Give me back the sky

Of golden rays and lighter blues,

But be careful there if when they lift

That reality I fear within

Doesn’t fling the shattered palette

And blind me to the outside day.

Photo by the author

Something Old New Borrowed Blue

Old (a Rondeau)

In the whole scheme of things

Life has fairly short wings.

Long enough to grow old

And old age can be cold.

Some memories have stings.

Photographs, wedding rings,

The songs he sometimes sings.

Like lasting spores of mold

In the whole scheme of things.

Still some memory clings

Of their exchanging rings.

He stood in tux quite bold.

That memory not dulled

In the whole scheme of things

New

Vivacity in white,

White on white,

The white of new,

The white of fresh.

Who on such purity can gaze?

How like staring at the face of God.

I do.

Trim as a reed is she, I fear to breathe,

Exhaling may bend and blow away such fragility.

What wonderful exquisiteness this dreamer mist.

How can it be clasped, who could, who would?

I do,

Trembling as I teeter on wakefulness

Even as I grasp for a hand of flesh and warmth.

Where am I now? It’s as if I’m there, still new in awkwardness.

How it seems a tick of the clock stole that spoken vow:

I do,

That solemn phrase that made us whole, made us one,

Eternal we thought then, telluric I know now.

Borrowed

Ah, her mother began to cry:

Itsy bitsy tears

Roll down the woman’s snout.

Out came her hanky

To smear the tears about.

Blue

In today’s today the sky is an empty blue

Echoed by the azure of the stone.

Blue was her favorite color,

Which is why I picked it with ease.

A Celastrina rests upon it now,

Calm and unafraid, wings gently folded,

Rippling some in the gentle breeze.

She loved my eyes because they were blue.

Her own were brown, she wished for mine.

I’d gladly give them to her and go blind,

I only gaze in mind upon her now.

The butterfly silently departs,

Its shadow flutters as a flicker

Across the potted Forget-me-nots

To the Chicory beyond and distant.

And the blue sky dims toward twilight,

Into a kind of slate and steel hue

Where now my life is lived in blue.

And still I stay, I haven’t moved.

Fireflies flash now all about.

In the whole scheme of things.

Life has fairly too short wings.

Photo of Celastrina by Jim Asher

An appreciative thank you to Thursday Poets Rally for Perfect Poets Award, week 50.

I nominate for

Award, Kay Salady, at

"My Mind is Frozen."

A Short History of Coffee and Poetry and Thoughts of J.M.

Back in the whenever somewhere

            In the sometime I grew up there,

            If you wanted a coffee, to the diner you’d go.

           

            You’d sit at a counter along a narrow row.

            Into a crockery cup they’d softly pour the joe.

            Or into paper cups in paper bags that’d tear

From the spills and splashes of the brown brew.

            They might serve beans and potpie stew,

            But there was no poetry.

In the shadow of Willie Penn’s city hall tower,

            When I was a long-hair, yelling peace and flower-power,

            Sitting nights in dim, dingy coffee shops

Pretending espresso was not bitter slop,

            There’d fall a hush when all would shut their mouth,

And in air smelling of smoke thick and sour,

           You’d amble to a two-foot stage, and rail

            About injustice and pain and those who fail

            To acknowledge poetry.

            Now in seasons warm or seasons cold,

            In the curt time I am growing old,

            When we seek the juice of the coffee bean

           

            We seek the malls and that neon beam

            Of the bookstore wonders to which we stream,

            Where for four bucks the coffee’s sold.

            And in what moments we can glean,

Between the chugs of the cappuccino machine,

We still read our poetry.

Thanks to Ava and Poetry Palace and I have nominated Old raven.