Rose Colored Glasses

Welcome back, poetry people!

Coming off of last week’s letter, the only thing more basic or equally as simple as aroma that I can think of that will elicit an equally strong primal creative response is color. Whether spending time out in the gorgeous natural full spectrum wonderland that is the outside world, decorating your space for sensory stimulation, or going to a special experience like a light or art show to get a little color exposure.

Color Me Intrigued

Since childhood, I’ve always loved bright color combinations like magenta and chartreuse. I was born legally blind, and without the glasses I got at approximately age 4, neutral or too similar of tones have always blended. For example, if I look at a snow-covered landscape without my glasses, all I see is flat white. So, I was drawn to bright and easily distinguishable combinations. I throw color around like it is the oxygen I need to live. Our favorite things are inextricably linked to our senses. Our favorite foods, smells, and tastes bring back beautiful memories, and we accent our lives with the things that bring us joy. Color brings joy.

Of course, we all have our favorite colors, the ones we are drawn to, we dress in often, and we decorate with, but that isn’t the only color that can spark memories and creativity. Colors are connected with different emotions, textures, temperatures, and seasons. Sometimes, it can be good to take a turn around the color wheel and look at a color we don’t love, or that makes us anxious to dive into the rich tapestry of colors and feelings.

Colored World (CW Child Abuse)

This poem explores one of the first memories I got back years ago before a change in medication dimmed the light on them again. I was in a corner convenience store trying to find a beverage, and looking over at the Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers, which looked the same as I remembered them, flashed me back.

It was also the first memory I recovered from before I got my glasses when the world consisted of only shapes and colors, which was very disorienting. So I just shut the case and got out of there. The outside light made it worse, and I barely got up the stairs into my apartment on the other end of the block, where I dazed out the rest of the day.

Wine coolers weren’t the only alcohol my family plied me with; they were just the first. People want to go on about gateway drugs; from my perspective, alcohol is the gateway drug. I started being fed sips of wine, coolers, and beer at age three, combined with OTC medications to make me compliant and cloud my mind and memory. Benadryl, Tylenol PM, and NyQuil until I was around 6 when it was clear I was starting to remember, and those drugs were losing their effect.

So, my family had to move on to more extreme measures: Wild Turkey and prescription drugs like Tigan (an antiemetic), Vicodin, and Darvon. That’s just what I can remember at this point.

Colored World

Bring me a pink one
Pink, orange, red
Saying them in my head
Skipping down the hall
Grabbing up a
rocket-shaped bottle
Slowly walking back
Careful not to trip
Seeing myself in the mirror
A massive blur of hair
Wavy lines
And dread
Maybe I’m just a mirage
Created by the sun 
Shining in the window
Blue And pink 
and brown

Silver Tongued

I find that interacting with art, scenery, or simply colored light that aligns with my creative mood is a massive boost to my creativity and helps me focus on the writing task at hand. Keeping me in that flow state, helping block out distractions, allowing the muse to take over, and telling my story for me. A story that has been trapped inside, draining me of energy and life.

This piece Takes on blue and green tones and a languid aqueous pace—a slow trickling growth. I first started colorizing my poems to send them to journals; some of the E-Zines and more avant-garde journals include color text, and I have gone a little nuts with it ever since. When it dawned on me that I could colorize the text here, I was gone. That renewed my excitement all over again. I hope this will pique your excitement and get you interested in adding color text accent to your poetry.

Silver Tongued

Locked in a lighthouse
Sobbing a
diamond and sapphire sea
Drawing up buckets to
gaze upon my likeness

Painstakingly setting it
into platinum rings
I distribute them to
every secret sister I meet
I fear the whole world
Will be decked in
jewels at this rate

Door blocked up with an
unbreakable web of fears
Finally, I sailed away
on my cabochon sea
Smooth and glassy
without a wave
The azure skies
blanketed my
angle ridden frame

The tides of forever
My vast welcoming home
Reading by the
Pearly moonbeams
Singing
Silver-tongued verses
Of the evergreen past
As I restlessly roam

While the eerie nightlight
Weaves shafts of stardust
Into my hair

Turning Muscovite pages
Filled with images of
My treacherous life
Dropping read leaves
As I finish the passage
Of each endless day

Permanently destroying
The proof of my stay
On the mottled
Spinning jewel
Oceanic and
Verdant hues entwined
Where we all carve
Our marks

When my ship settles
The pool
Is ice cold and
Obsidian black

Perfect Foils

I have already let you in on my inner world regarding Meltdowns and flashbacks. Trauma flashbacks tend to have a color aura of black and red, often causing the disoriented feeling like being submerged underwater, but even then, things seem tinged with flashing red and black light.

When I'm caught in this state, I alternate between being physically overwhelmed with heat and cold. My body is unable to regulate its temperature at the best of times, but when I am in distress, the effect is ramped up to eleven. Red represents the blasting heat, and black is the bone-quaking cold.

Color is a huge part of how I define my moods and the world in general; red and black are warning signs for me that I need to find someplace dark and quiet to ride out the coming storm.

Perfect Foils

Vermilion and obsidian 
Oscillating like a fan
Hot and cold
Fire and coal

Plumes 
Blaze, like dragon’s breath
Waft from pores
Flashing 
Illuminate my soul

Until the fuel is spent
Embers and ash
Desperately 
Scratching through the 
Carbon copy 
To the carmine 
Truth below

Slips all spent
And collected
Entombed in 
Cardboard caskets
All awaiting the rosebud 
Rapture
Of this nuclear winter

Spare me the rod
Lest you despoil 
Your masterpiece 
The hands of time
shake with excitement
as they draw nearer
my remains

a perfect blackened 
outline
bucket filled with 
red paint

Triple Rainbow

Color can be symbolic when writing and creating art of any kind. Color theory is a variety of subjects that spread across practically every field of study, which you could spend years on at university, so I will not try and talk about something I am vastly unqualified to prattle on about. The symbolism and feelings evoked by a rainbow are fairly widely discussed.

I wrote this poem in June when one kind of rainbow was on our minds, and coming so close to Autism Awareness Month (April), it reminded me there is also at least one more “rainbow” besides those two I have always been associated with.

My brother and I both entered the world under a black cloud. We were both conceived directly before the miscarriage of another baby. To the point, we wouldn’t exist if our lost siblings did. A child conceived and born under those circumstances is colloquially known as a “rainbow baby.” It’s funny how one of those things made me a miracle to my family, and the other two…didn’t.

Triple Rainbow

I slipped between the colors
I’m a child made of
bending light
They call it a rainbow
But it’s so
much more than that
I am the storm’s delight
When tears seemed
endless
showering from above 
I, was a gift
to bring color and love
The ways I brought
were strange and bright
Endless in energy 
yet exhausted by 
my own bright light 
The encircling route
I twirled and followed
constantly lengthening
forever narrowed
It flips back upon itself 
in an endless track
I may not run
at a constant speed
but I will flit along it 
a spectral fairy infinitely
even a brief interlude
won’t shade my light
or break the mood
I reflect each color
as I fly by
emitting a
tracing halo glow
faster and faster
in a dazzling
technicolor display
a triple rainbow 
loop-de-loop
No entrance
no exit

Velvet Ochre

Our senses have this amazing way of mingling and reinforcing each other. You can read a poem about color with your eyes that evokes scents, flavors, and sounds. And your brain tells you it is experiencing those even when it hasn’t, at least if I have written this properly.

This piece was, in fact, a challenge on Medium, with the directive to incorporate one color in as many ways, shades, and as many times as possible. While still crafting an excellent poem or flash fiction. I wouldn’t usually turn to the color yellow, but I decided to look in a different direction, dig deep, and create, not just let my current mood flow out of me.

Velvet Ochre

Even in the crisp, chilly sun
There seems to be 
The likelihood to run
Golden pollen
Creating shimmering 
Yolky pools
Though long fallen
Still coating grass 
dried like straw 
laying in clumps 
Running through
percolates the 
Canary clouds 
starting to brew 
Grabbing a
blooming dandelion
Plucking it before the
fluff 
Forms and flies away
A fluffy buzzing
bumble bee
Now powdery
flies from
A clustered head of
mustard 
Like a criminal absconding with its 
Dusty quarry
Gathered together by 
An expert forager
Permanently capturing 
This citrine wonder
Shining down like 
God’s presence among us

I had several pieces started or already written aligned with the color purple, so when I got a set of four images that told a story of being led down the path of life by the Muse arrayed in shades of purple, I decided to rework and expand them into an abstract series of poems. The piece is a sort of free-form treatise on the life of a captive artist in service to the Muse, all in shades of purple and accompanying coloration.

You will get that delivered to your inbox tomorrow. I hope you enjoy it!

Until Next week,

K.B. Silver