'colors' poems - Hello Poetry

Jess Rose May 2010

I’ve seen colors melt, colors mold over, colors who stick to the sides of
Other colors
I’ve seen colors which soak to the quick of wood and skin, ones that spill over
Or dry like deserts
I’ve seen colors that congeal like the living, I’ve seen the same ones mixed to death
I’ve seen colors pool, colors rust and colors boil

I’ve seen colors that don’t read maps
Colors that overrun, overturn, overlove their neighbors
And ones that play well in sand
I’ve seen colors that drink cocktails, drink water, drink blood
Together
Colors that get bored, colors that get sexed
I’ve seen colors ripped from the earth
Seen them ghost to other places

I’ve seen colors give up, every time, waiting for air, for shelter,
For Godot
I’ve seen colors grow cold like science
Grow loud like a flag unfurling
Grow up, move out, move on
I’ve seen colors stuck in between things
These same colors fill empty spaces
Fill vision, fill cups of coffee
I’ve seen colors tell white lies
They aren’t white
They are happy

And they aren’t here for us

Mymai Yuan Sep 2010

Colors Underneath the Bed

Mymai Yuan Sep 2010

Colors Underneath the Bed

I was born a sickly, screeching baby, two months earlier than expected. The doctor and midwife did everything they could to keep my little limbs moving and to keep my tiny heart beating, fluttering like the wings of butterfly.
“Is it a boy?” my mother whispered through her pale lips, as they bathed my naked body in hot water.
“No, ma’am, it’s a girl” The midwife struggled to add on something that would make the wailing creature seem more desirable. “With exquisitely shaped feet, so perfectly miniature”
She let out a croak of conflicting emotions: the joy and pride of a newly-founded motherly love, the fear of presenting a girl as a first-born, the relief that the hours of agony in childbirth were over and the dread of facing her husband once he found out about me.

My mother was not healthy after my birth for a long time; and when I was only one and two months old she fell dangerously ill, and the house whispered footsteps running to her room late at night and muffled voices of different doctors. Mercifully, she survived but was left barren and forever unfertile.
I can not imagine my father’s fury. He believed in having sons to carry on his old last name of thirty-one generations; it was his religion and had I been a son, I would have been worshipped as a god. I can imagine how my mother prayed and thanked her ancestors that her dowry was of a large one.

He could barely tolerate being in the same room as me during my toddler years. Every time he entered a room I was playing in, nurse would sweep me to our garden out side; answering to my startled queries, “Be an obedient daughter, don’t bother your father and don’t ask questions”
My body had been born frail, but my natural spirit was as healthy as could be, full of inquiries, wonders of the world around me and everyday I would learn something new just wandering around the neighborhood observing things, with my nurse trailing with a worried eye behind me muttering, “Girls are not supposed to be exposed to this” she spoke the words as if they were sour, “you should be sitting at home and accompanying your mother.”

Every day at dinner, the two females of the house, me and my mother, were silent while my father ranted on and on. My appetite being very delicate, I often just sat there as still as I possibly could and listened to my father talking about politics, jobs, money. Things he called ‘men business’. I longed to ask questions about these ‘men business’, especially ‘university’ for I had an inquisitive sort-of nature but was refrained with a sharp, piercing look from my mother every time I opened my mouth and sometimes, she pinched me under the table leaving purple splotches which flashed, “Don’t question your father”
Sometimes, he would talk about the future he had decided for me, “You will marry off, sixteen at the latest, to some one rich and beneficial to our family. You will do as I say till I marry you off, and then you will do as your husband tells you.”
“Yes father, for I should repay everything you have done for me” I replied as sweetly as I could.
“Yes, you’re a good daughter. Bear lots of sons for him and your house will be one of happiness.”
I was proud that he had given me a compliment. “Yes father, for it will make you joyful as I always wish to make you so”
My childish heart did not understand why my mother turned her head down while her left eyebrow twitched, and why that night, as she tucked me into bed, I thought I saw a tear roll down her cheek and why as she kissed me that night she whispered, “Do not love me so; love your father. The men in your life are your gods.”

My physical health would constantly limit the desires of my free spirit. I could not to do what others who were as free of spirit as I was could do, and couldn’t socialize with them and the rest of the children in my neighborhood had their siblings to mingle with, causing me to become the pitiful outcast.
I saw children around my age, around seven or eight, climbing trees and wanted to do so as well, but my white feet did not have grip enough to grasp onto the fat branches.
Father caught me once trying to propel myself up a tree and his expression was both of a resigned anger and sadness before he turned him and his face away and back into the house without a word.
That night, mother told me not to climb trees ever again. I noticed a faint bruise on her cheek bone that had been covered with white powder.

When I was eleven or twelve, and was allowed to wander further out into the neighborhood with my nurse I saw the boys fishing in the nearby pond and wanted to do so as well. Starting that day, every week I pocketed the three coins mother gave me until I could buy the best fishing rod in the little store and ran as fast as my skinny, weak legs could carry me to the pond. I mimicked the way the boys flung the fishing rod out over the water but the metal pole was too heavy for my pale, shaking arms. I tried over and over again as my nurse watched, biting her lip in anxiety. I held the fishing rod with trembling sore arms till I felt a bite; I pumped my small arms to reel it in, but they were so tired and I was far too slow, losing the fish I had spent half the day trying to catch. “Ah, just bad luck, don’t worry! It was a smart fish, I tell you!” nurse exclaimed, though her eyes flashed a look of pity and I knew she knew it wasn’t just bad luck or a smart fish.
In anger, I sold the fishing rod to one of the boys for two-thirds of the price I had bought it for. He was delighted with the bargain and I watched with a lump in my throat as he caught three fish with the tug of his healthy, muscular arm within fifteen minutes. “This is a beautiful rod, and the pond is just filled with fish today, Little Sister!”
Wanting to spend the money jingling inside my pocket, money that to me was just a reminder of a painful memory, I headed off to the collection of little shops close to my house where I was guaranteed distraction. Nurse, sweating and complaining of the heat, followed me.
An ageing man with a bunch of filthy hair working away on a piece of thick, rough paper with wondrous colors inside a shop caught my eye as I peered inside the window. He turned the picture upside down and continued blending in the dark colors of the shape to create a shadow along the curve of it. I entered the shop. “What is that?” I asked of him.
“A face” he replied back absentmindedly.
“Doesn’t look like one to me” I confessed with my honesty.
He looked up at me, “No, it does not to you, and maybe, neither will it at the end. To me, it looks like an angle of a faded face. But slowly, with time, it will become clearer and clearer, yet only to me, and as it does, I will be able to choose more colors to make it yet more beautiful. The outcome of this painting is entirely up to me.”
I felt my challenging self rising up. “But what if you imagined a certain color in your head but couldn’t find it or be able to mix it to your mind’s perfection?”
“Then I would create my own paint color.”
“You know how?”
“No, but if I could not find the paint color already made I would make it myself, and no matter what, would learn how to. So far I have always been able to compromise and mix different colors to please me.”
“You do an awful lot of shadowing light colors with dark colors”
“Why do you think I do so?” he questioned me this time, with bright eyes.
I pondered for a moment to give as good an answer as he had given me and then told him my answer.
He nodded with impress, “Yes, yes, absolutely right. I never thought I’d hear that from a child” and looked at me with his head cocked in curiosity.
“What would you like to buy from here, Little Sister?”
Still deeply interested in our conversation I pulled out the coins I had in my pocket. “How much stuff can I buy with all this money? I’d like those crayons, I’ve tried them once before and they are so creamy and smooth.”
“Oil pastels?” he asked, a little confusedly.
Feeling ashamed of my ignorance, I nodded. The tutor father hired evidently bent to father’s strict rules of what should be taught and what would not be taught. Father disapproved of women painting, and would’ve dismissed nurse had he known that instead of taking me out for a little walk to smell the blooming daffodils, she in fact let me explore the environment around me to the best of my ability even in disgruntle.
The man gave my red-patched cheeks and undeveloped translucent frame a sympathetic look and when he spoke, his voice was gentle. “Little Sister, I’ve a whole basket of oil paints that I’ve used but rarely and so are still in perfect condition. Would you like to carry the whole basket home for all the money you have in your pockets?”
I handed him all my golden coins, “But first I must see if I like it.”
“You won’t be disappointed” he chuckled and walked with an imbalanced limp to the back of the store. I noticed a wooden stump protruding from the bottom of his long, black pants. My heart throbbed achingly; he was ****** limited too. I turned to his painting and smiled from deep inside, a smile I rarely wore.
He came back tugging a huge brown basket filled to the brim with sticks of oil pastels, some longer or thicker than others. He lifted an orange one up and showed the tip of it to me, which was stained with a black mark. “Sometimes when you blend colors this will happen, but it’s easy to rid off. Just softly, and patiently rub it off on a cloth until it disappears.” He demonstrated upon his black pants.
“Thank you. It’s kind of you. But...I can’t carry this home myself. It’s heavy.”
I turned to nurse and smiled my best pleading smile.

The basket was toiled up as nurse undressed me from my shower and father and mother were otherwise occupied. That night, with my precious basket safely under my bed, I cleaned all the multi-colored oil pastels on an old shirt, and as soon as the house was ringing with silence, I locked my door and flicked on the lamp light, and started pressing the smooth colors into the paper to blend and make a picture of kissing colors on a relatively large piece of white paper. A thrill ran from my finger tips and along my arm, and made my palms tingle as I held the colorful sticks in my hand to the paper. I hid it underneath my bed just as a rosy sun was rising.
*
I was sixteen, and I was thought beautiful: for now, at this age, it was considered beautiful to be so pale of skin, so small of feet and hands, graceful to have tiny limbs and charming to have little strength for it was now considered ‘feminine’.
It was three weeks after I had turned sixteen and for dinner, father had brought over an ugly man with a bulging waist and shiny bald head who continually made ****** jokes at the dinner table while he believed I did not understand them. He was infamous for the two wives he had had (before they died from sickness), and how he not only hit them but kept other lovers too. Yet he was desirable for his vast richness. He leered at me obnoxiously, in an attempt to smile.
Father caught him looking at me, “She’s incredibly silent, never says a word of defiance and will be a most dutiful wife.”
“Yes, she is beautiful”
My heart froze and my brain was stimulated to work twice as fast. Him?! Him?! The man who’s wives were killed through an illness called ‘abuse, neglect and disloyalty?!’
I cast my eyelashes down in order to appear a calm, modest young lady while my heart hammered in fury, disgust and a rising hysterical panic. I shot a look at my mother whose left eyebrow was twitching as she stared down at her dinner plate, and I knew she was having the same thoughts as I.
“I would be glad to have you as my son-in-law. You would have no trouble with her, and would be embraced with open arms into our family.”
They continued this path of talk through dinner while he eyeballed me in a way that made me cringe. I felt his foot nudge mine under the table and in haste tucked it under the chair with a little gasp. His eyes glittered at my gasp and I was furious with myself for letting him feel a rotten triumph. Though I had always felt an extremely strong dislike towards him from what I knew of him and sometimes saw of him with an immoral lady, something pushed in the pit of my tummy, and I knew it was pure hatred.
When mother tucked me in she was being strange. On closing my door she whispered, “I love you… so I wish you to know… don’t ever contradict men”

As I was secretly drawing a picture as I did every night till dawn, I heard my father’s voice roar in the dead of the night. In a sudden, I shoved my portrait under the bed and threw all my oil pastels into the basket, hid it, and switched the light off. I heard his voice roar again, accompanied by a thud. I was wild with fear as I crept to my door and pressed my ear against it, barely even shocked at my own daringness as my instinct, love, took over- my instinct of must knowing what was happening to my mother.
“How dare you say I’m wrong!?” there was another thud, and this time I heard a soft whimper. “She is worthless to me, not a son. And I will marry her off to a rich man who can actually benefit this family.” He roared.
There was a whisper which I strained to hear, “He will **** her”
“From the moment she was born she wasn’t made to live!” he yelled.
A hiss escaped my tongue and I coiled like a serpent, flinching as a thud was heard yet again and an immediate cry of pain escaped from both my lips and my mothers’.
A fire awoke inside me, burning my temples and my whole body and my eyes stung with hot tears; tears that burned my face as they splashed down. My whole body was shaking and my tightly squeezed eyes were going through spasms. I was no longer wild with fear, but with anger.
I turned my light back on and tugged my basket of oil pastels out. I yanked my portrait off from a thick of pile of different pictures I had drawn.
My breath was coming in quick short breaths as I finished my portrait to the utmost perfection, using every oil pastel in the basket. Every time I heard a thud, I colored with more fiery… shadowing my jaw line with the fat black oil pastel, in the crook of my ear, the corner of my mouth… where the light shone upon my fore head, how it reflected in the color of my eye and glowed on my cheeks.
When I was finished, the house was deadly quiet again and dawn was breaking. I looked down upon it and realized something that changed my life.
In frenzy I swatted out all the things I had ever drawn and stared at them in an awakening.
The colors on them were the events of my life, the things that characterized it, the decisions. They were beautiful for they had been chosen and controlled by me … I had chosen the colors I wanted and thought best for my pictures; and spent thought over how to blend different colors to the color I wanted.
And everyday, as I worked into the drawings with time, they became clearer and clearer on what was the right thing to do, and how it should possibly look like in the next stage.
I leaned over and kissed the thin lips of my portrait that didn’t look exactly like me for not even the most skilled artists have complete control over what they draw.

Then I remembered what I had told the one-legged man in the shop a few years go:
“Lights not only illuminate, they also cast shadows. The contrast makes you able to appreciate the power of both.”
Now it was time to truly let the light illuminate my life, and let the shadows let me appreciate the light that shines upon me; I color my own life, and choose my own colors.

To pull out the colors underneath the darkness of my bed…
And spill it to the world outside.

Melancholy of Innocence Mar 2019

Colors of LOVE

Melancholy of Innocence Mar 2019

Colors of LOVE

My dear BELOVEDz
You have played festivals of colors
With me through centuries
I've been your Romeo, Rumi, Radha
Zuliet, Layla, Heer, Sohni
Majnun, Rabia, Ranjhanaa

Today,
I am standing in front of YOU
with your colors in my heart
Can YOU play colors with me?

Without YOU
Without your colors
I can't find
Lyrics in my songs

YOU are the naughty, cool
Fragrant color of my life

Why are YOU always in such a hurry
It is so difficult to calm YOU down

Color my dreamZ slowly BELOVEDz
Please play colors with me BELOVEDz

At every shore of every ocean
On every flora of every forest
On every bird of every sky
Everything is covered with your colors

I can smell your fragrance everywhere
But I can't see YOU anywhere

I want to melt in your colors
I want to be covered with your colors

Till now YOU've been so tender to me
Hiding and throwing colors on me

I keep on calling out for YOU
Oh.. my BELOVEDz
Oh... my BELOVEDz
Come and apply some more
Colors of your LOVE on me

At nights YOUR whispers color
My heart in BLUE
During days your presence colors
My SOUL in RED

Your hide and seek laughter
Resonates music around me

Let us be together and play
This festivities of colors

I can't see you in worldly crowd
Be brave and come out in front of me
And apply some COLORS of LOVE on me

David John Mowers Sep 2017

Acid Drip

David John Mowers Sep 2017

Acid Drip

Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.
Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.
Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.

Depression of Science

Believe in possible
achieve the probable
accept the inevitable
laws are boundaries..

Oh, those sprinkle's shards
they hug the lamplight so?

Possible, they believe me
Laws, condor, deceiving...
Fate enviable acceptance
-evening
Akha, Okto, Echo, Eight-

Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.
Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.
Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.

Was it one or eight?
I
ate
One
then
Eight?

118
1118
1118
11118
111118
8

Shhhh...you hear that?
...there's something in the closet...

it's like a
ant on crack
a ant on
Crack

it's like a
ant on crack
a ant on
ANT ON CRACK
nano,
-Crack

it's like a
ant on crack
ANT ON CRACK
ant on
Crack
ant on
Crack
ant on
Crack
ant on
Crack

it's like a
ANT ON CRACK

..fingertips in heaven
Heaven's a construct,
by a carpenter and a drywaller....
and a painter...

Controlled by
Home's Despotism

Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.
Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.
Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.

Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.
Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.
Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.

Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.
Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.
Bouncy, swirly, colors see me.

it's like a
ANT ON CRACK

#lsd #alcoholism #schizophernia #mentalillness #acid #phish #drugs #hearingthings #numbers

Manny Arriaga Apr 2017

Colors

Manny Arriaga Apr 2017

Colors

Red was the glow in his eyes,
The way his tinted lips took my attention
on an early glowing evening.
His sight sparked many shades of red,
And that of orange.

Orange was a layer of a tropical sky,
The sun casting down gently on such a gazeful gent.
As glistening was the pigment of a fine ring,
A mold had shaped his warm summer tan;
His skin a golden yellow.

Yellow was his natural shine,
A daisy in the midst of a patch of posies.
His character shined brighter than the exterior of his sky burnt skin,
And of that of any man I’ve come to know,
His flowery nature lasting among his sun-kissed petals,
Down to his burly stems of green

Green was the field of grass where we grew,
Our souls intertwining in such a lovely concoction.
I’ve never stopped to wonder which way the wind blew,
Or which direction sent the earthy string of nature ablaze,
Each strand flowing in an individual direction.
He held my hand through it all,
Our bodies lain across the patch.
Our hands encased and wrapped together.
Our eyes kept focused at atmosphere’s midnight blue.

Blue was our love.
The color of blood that ran through his veins
in which I knew gave him life,
And gave me mine.
Blue was the color of his jeans which excited me through their texture,
Their scent,
The sole object on him that I’ve come to realize was there the entire time,
From the lavender of a morning sky,
Casted down to the purple of an evening indigo,

Indigo was the night he loved me under the moon,
When the stars shined bright over our faces,
And the touch of his skin shined brighter than the stars themselves,
Among these constellations lying the pavement of a wind sulk violet.

Violet was the essence of his pores,
The essence that lasted longer than the span of life.
His natural aura glowed between us,
The same way a rainbow would shed its own;
A multitude of… colors.

Colors were his eyes.
His skin.
His smile.
His soul.

Colors were our blood.
Our scents.
Our sights.
Our sounds.

Colors were our everything,
From the moment he’d wake in bed,
To the last lovely thought he’d have when drifting into a slumbering sleep.

Colors were his height.
His hair.
His heart.
His hope.

Colors were my mind.
My thoughts.
My wants.
My desires.

Colors were mine.

But just like the Sun won’t last forever,
Until the moon rises above to seize the day and conquer the night,
A rainbow only lasts for as long as you would allow.
A rainbow only lasts for as long as he would allow.

For as long as he’d keep close attention to the surface,
He would only stay colored until his own face would dim into dust.

Suddenly the colors I once knew faded into shades of their own.

Red was the anger in his eyes.

Orange was the smoke,
The trail of his dead skin.

Yellow was the ***** of liquid poison,
The temptations of fermented gold that forever laid upon his tainted breath.

Green was the sickness of a disease,
His once foresty lungs and fiery stems gradually fading into their collapse.

Blue was his dried out veins.

Indigo were the bruises.

Indigo was the color of a midnight sky filled with constant arguing,
Our once amorous souls now unbinding into a useless string.

Violet was the last scent I breathed when he left me.

And soon after,
The departure of that one man,
Was the arrival of terror.

At the slam of the door,
And the silence of the night,
The colors soon faded as fast as he disappeared.

Suddenly, the cast of darker shades,
Darker sights,
Darker thoughts came along,
My feet drowning in the black that was once a puddle,
Now an ocean of thick dark water that spurt its heavy flavor into the throat of my own mouth.

The storm took me over faster than what I could remember;
What was once left a color now drowned in the black of evil emotions.

Memories broke down in the lightening of my mind,
The hope diminishing faster than I could see.
The black took control of who I used to be,
The darkness growing from what he took.

What was once love died into loss,
My heart no longer pumping the same red from before.
No longer glowing from the sky’s orange from before.
No longer warm like the yellow sky from before.
No longer growing in the green from before.
No longer controlled by the blue from before.
No longer resting on indigo night’s from before.
No longer essence of violets from before.

Before, my colors ranged from lights and darks,
But now,
Everything is black.

But just like the Sun won’t last forever,
Until the mood rises above to seize the day and conquer the night,
A storm only lasts for as long as you would allow.
A storm only lasts for as long as I would allow.

Gazing into the pitch black of the sea,
I know of what comes next.

As soon as the last blue tidal wave crashes,
As the glimpse of reds and oranges flow back from the abyss of indigoes and violets,
As the green glistens godly at the sight of the golden, yellow sun,
I come to realize:
The longer a storm crashes down on what you once felt,
The colors of a rainbow arrive faster.

I wait for what brightens again.
He may have drained what was left of the Earth,
But he can’t stop it from replenishing.
Neither… can I.

#lgbt #romance #gay #resilience #colors #red #orange #yellow #green #blue #indigo #violet #purple #abuse #romantic

Jeff Gaines Mar 2018

Thee Longest Piece Ever Uploaded On Hello Poetry (As far as I know) ** I doubt you'll read it through **

Jeff Gaines Mar 2018

Thee Longest Piece Ever Uploaded On Hello Poetry (As far as I know) ** I doubt you'll read it through **

OK Reader, I'm going to tell you a tale … with great trepidation. You see, this tale, well, it's kind of like telling someone that you've seen a UFO. They want to believe you, but … it's never really been proven scientifically. Not to mention the fact that most folks who believe in such things are often the tin-hat wearing types, written off as … lets be nice and call them “odd”. And, of course, the more you swear to it, the crazier you appear. It's an epic tale, spanning 30 years of my crazy life.

  But, It's a story I want to tell, because it happened to me. I can barely understand it myself, let alone explain it. So … I'm just going to launch into it and you take it any way you wish.

*  *
Where Can You Be?

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

I'll search with gazes and I'll search with cars,
I'll search the cities and I'll search the stars, well …
I'm gonna find you, oh, wherever you are,
I'm gonna find you baby …  near or far, but …

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

I thought I'd found ya, but she wasn't you,
that girl she left alone and blue, well …
I know that's something that you'd never do,
your love has always been strong and true, but …

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

If you must settle for some other man
and deviate from our immortal plan, well …
I hope you realize I will understand
and I'll try and do the best that I can, but …

Where will I be?
Where will I be, my love?
Hoping the next life sees …
our destiny!

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

~Wednesday, April 1st, 1987
10:30 P.M.

  I was singing in a band back in those days and, as it happened, this was the last song I'd ever write for it. Just after this, as it does, it all came crashing down and the band was finished. But in those last days, they pondered this song, with great puzzlement. You see, it was unlike anything I'd brought them before. It wasn't rock … It wasn't a ballad … it wasn't even structured like a “normal” 80's rock song.

  No bridge, no solo, no loud grinding guitars, etc. It even had bits where I hummed, yes hummed, the melody, like a lullaby. As they read the lyrics and I described how it went, they all looked at me like I had three heads and asked where this had come from. It was nothing like anything I'd written before. I could only tell them when and where I'd written it, but had no explanation of what inspired it. It had just came to me, so I wrote it down. They didn't know what to make of it, or even what to do with it.

  One of them said it sounded like a late 70's or early 80's adult contemporary song or even in the vein of The Eagles. Another asked if it was about reincarnation … And I honestly, until that moment, hadn't thought of it that way, I didn't think like that at 24 … but then, one of them said it was “Haunting” …

  “Haunting”?

  “Wow”, I thought, I'd never had anything I'd written described as that before. When I asked him what he meant by that, he told me that it was haunting to think that this poor guy is desperately seeking a girl, that may or may not even know that he exists … in a world with billions of people in it. To top that off, he fears that she may off and marry someone else if he doesn't find her in time.

  This, along with the suggestion of it being about reincarnation made me rethink and rewrite the song. Well, a few lines in the last verse and chorus anyways. It actually made the song flow better and seem more complete. In a way, it actually made the song make more sense … to me and them. Sadly, we never did anything with it. There wouldn't be time. Ha … Time … how ironic. Over 10 years later, came this …

For Someone I've Never Met

Please save a place for me,
deep inside your heart.
Always know that I think of you,
as we both practice our arts.

Our worlds are full of temptations,
so very hard to resist …
and the good Lord knows
we're both far from,
sixteen and never been kissed.

Wealthy men with jaws divine …
Temptresses with looks so fine …
Paths that lead our hearts away …
Paths that surely lead astray …

They'll lead us there every time.
They'll leave us there … so  unkind.
Our hearts must shine,
night and day.
Through any darkness … they'll light our way.

If you never touch my face …
If I never look into your eyes …
We'll always have the comfort of sharing
the same
big, blue sky.

If I never smell your hair …
If you never kiss my lips …
Always know the search for your smile
has launched a thousand ships.

So, I hope you save a place for me
in your heart so sweet and kind.
Please, save a place for me …
Heaven knows you've one in mine.

~Thursday, September 9th, 1999
9 A.M.

“For Someone I've Never Met ” poured out of me in the midst of another breakup from the second, and last, girl that I wanted to marry. That emotion, never found me again. I looked at it on my computer screen and smiled, seeing “Where Can You Be”, in my mind, on my tattered old note pad that I called my “Song Book”. The memory of me writing it while sitting in my Z-28, looking out over the Gulf of Mexico as a beautiful heat lighting storm sent bolts across the sky, came flooding back; as did the debate of reincarnation I'd had with my pals in the rehearsal room all those years before. Here I was, again, writing about “someone” that I sensed, for lack of a better term, was out there … somewhere.

  Well Reader, do you believe in reincarnation? I was never really certain, but, as you can see, I had twice written pieces to someone I wasn't completely sure existed. I had always “sensed” someone out there beginning with the period after I wrote “Where Can You Be?” and thereafter. So, there they were, each written after losing someone I was deeply in love with. Each came out of nowhere, as they usually do. By the time I was in my 40's, I began to think I was either imagining it all (a side effect of being a hopeless romantic) or that I had just somehow missed this person and our “moment”.

  And then …

Epiphany

There was a place.
There was a time …
There, I stood … still unknowing
and everything seemed fine.

But there in that place …
at that moment in time …
the moment I saw the eyes,
I'd never believed I'd find.

Well, what could I say?
What could I do?
In a world filled with billions …
and there … was a you.

I'd always known you were out there …
even written of something amiss.
I never, ever stopped looking for you …
because my heart always said you exist.

My breezy Fall became harshest Winter.
My crazy life left my health running out.
I'd resigned myself that our moment had passed …
but this moment … it removed all doubt.

Well, what could I say?
Tell me, what could I do?
There we stood, staring … alone … in a city of millions …
yes, there … there was a you.

Oh, that mistress fate, she is just so cruel.
Frustration, a curse to be mine.
   I'd searched for you my entire life …
but now … my clock … knows a limit of time.

You see, I would never venture a love with you,
while knowing I'd have to leave you … hurt and alone.
I could only admire from afar … stoic and aloof …
while turning my heart into stone.

Nothing I could ever say and nothing I could ever do …
But now, at long last … at least I finally knew.

There, you stood … green seas, gazing up … into skies of blue.
My long-awaited revelation … become sorrow-laced realization.
There really is … a you.

~August 12th, 2009

  Typical of my life-long Charlie Brown syndrome … After being told in 2005 that I had “the lungs of an eighty-year-old man” and that I had “Six to Ten years” to live, I made a conscious decision in that Doctor's parking lot that I could never have another girlfriend and that I must face this alone. I don't see woman as objects. They are glorious creatures that are here to be our partners and friends and to make our lives amazing. I could never, ever knowingly let a woman fall in love with me, all the while knowing I was going to die and leave her. It's not in me to do such a thing, lonely or not.

  Yes, I'm still alive, I'm stubborn like that. But, some days are better than others and my new doctors say that they don't give people “time limits” anymore … because of people like me. I can't afford the lung transplant. So, as Bono so aptly put in one of his songs: “The rich stay healthy, while the sick stay poor”. It is what it is … and like the energizer bunny, I'm still going. Good for me.

  In the moment that I met her, the morning that followed, and the amazing speed of our nexus over the next several months combined with a string of synchronicities (Coincidences? Did I mention that she too, was a poet and writer?) that not only came after I met her on the sidewalk in front of the publisher we shared, but in those pieces I had written before and in several after; I was pretty much convinced I had actually found her. I have NEVER experienced anything like this, or her, in my entire life.

  So, after all this time, here she was … and there wasn't a **** thing that I could do about it. Besides, she was much younger than I and it probably would never have worked anyways. ****, the universe is rotten sometimes, huh? Maybe, if I'm lucky, things will balance out better in the next life. I can only hope. But I'm reminded, worryingly so, of the **** The Alarm song: “Collide”:

“All of these thoughts pounding in my head …
with the words I've wrote, in the letters I've never sent.
The distance in our lives may change …
Times that you can never erase …
But will our worlds collide?
Will our worlds collide, the next time?”

  Only time will tell.

  “Colors”, and a few others, were written about/for her. But, I could never show them to her. I would never endanger my friendship with her. I just wanted to keep her in my life. That, and that alone, was the only motive I'd ever had with her. I looked forward to seeing her marry, hearing her stories of her three kid's adventures; Hubby, all greasy, working on the car in the driveway, rabbits in her garden at night, eating her precious organic veggies or even about her new curtains. Just to know that she was alive, happy and doing well. I found a solace in her voice I could never describe and I was completely content to just have her in my life and watch hers unfold. Only I could end up in this odd position.

  I feared that she might get weird-ed out because I'd never displayed any romantic inklings toward her, so, to suddenly read these might make her feel a bit, lets say: uncomfortable. Actually, I didn't write them with any romantic intentions, per se; I just did what I always do … write what comes out. Still, there's no denying that they come across romantic. Again, so, so Charlie Brown. (long sigh)

  It is what it is. I also have to ponder the fact that maybe all those Charlie Brown moments in my life were preparing me for this one big, painful one. That does makes sense … ******' Universe.

Colors

Well when you're Green, I'll be your Brown.
Like the earth that loves the flowers,
I'll will be your solid ground.

And I'll be your Azure, when you are Verdigris.
We'll be thee most beautiful ocean
that eyes have ever seen.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
Mixing all of the colors … I'll make everything alright.

Now when you're Blue, I'll be you're Red.
If something should make you wanna cry,
I will feel your pain instead.

And I'll be your Orange, whenever you are Pink.
We'll be thee most amazing sunset,
that the sky could ever ink.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
I'll mix all of your colors … and make everything alright.

Should you be Violet, I will be your Beige.
Like a sleepy moonlit desert,
pasteled in dunes and sage.

And when you're Grey, I will be your Rainbow.
We'll be thee most soothing rainstorm
the world has ever known.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
I'll mix all of your colors … yes, I'll make everything alright.

With love on my palette, painting a glorious sunrise …
I'll color all your mornings with a smile and brighten up your skies.
If you should find yourself in sorrow from someones hate or lies …
I'll take the stars down from the heavens … and paint them in your eyes.

So whenever you are Black, I will always be your White.
I'll mix all your colors with a promise … everything will be alright.

Yes, I'll mix all of your colors with a promise … Everything's gonna be alright.

~  Winter 2012

  I wrote this after she had rang me up one afternoon lamenting about her life at the moment, troubled that her latest novel hadn't done as well as she'd hoped and now she had to be waitressing to make ends meet. I tried my best to cheer her up and assured her that she was strong enough to handle anything and that she must keep chasing her dreams. I wrote it as a poem, but I can't help but notice it looks like a song, though I've never heard music for it. Those repeated verses look just like choruses to me.

  Earlier in the day, I had been looking at a booklet of paint swatches. I guess, up there on my roof looking at the Manhattan skyline, her sadness and me looking at all those colors melted together somehow and, as happens, out came this piece. Even this, became another synchronicity as she would name her next novel “Show Me All Your Colors”. I remember seeing it in the bookstore and looking straight up … shaking my head at the sky. Was this the universe telling me to show and tell her all this?

  Well, if it was, I stuck with my gut and kept it to myself. My God, if you only knew how many of these synchronicities there were between her and I. It simply boggles my mind. I wanted to call them “coincidences”, but there were just so **** many of them … Each so unique, they just couldn't be called that. I don't want to tell them all here, because like I said, the more you swear to it, the crazier you sound. And I'm sure your questioning my sanity by now, aren't you? (Smirk)

  OK, OK … this one is definitely romantic. I wrote it one night, drunk to the bejeezus. I'd done what we called “The Crosstown Crawl” with my pal Tristan and a gaggle of assorted waitresses we knew. This involved starting at Brass Monkey on the west side highway in the Gansevoort District and ending at my favorite hookah bar, Karma, on the Lower East Side … Drinking in, and often being “asked to leave” (Read: Kicked out of) every bar that took our interest as we walked (Read: staggered) west to east, staying below 14th St.

  On my way home from the city on the J train, I thought about all the phone conversations we'd had while I was on this train crossing the Williamsburg Bridge. Being drunk, I guess, I caught a bout of sadness that I'd never get to tell her any of this or even how I felt about it all. Before I hit my elevator, this piece was swimming in my head. It's about as mushy a piece as I've ever written … if not thee most! Not the norm for me, but this is, after all, a lot to keep pent up inside you. I wouldn't wish this predicament on anyone.

For My Little Red-Haired Girl …

You …

My Love.
My Queen.
This Shining Light in my eyes.

My Laughs.
My Dreams.
My Soft, Contented Sighs.

My *****.
My Lavender.
My Dew Covered Rose.

My Smile.
My Cinnamon.
The Joy in my heart … ever inspiring my prose.

My Best Friend.
My Co-Star.
My Fearless Partner in Crime.

My Breath.
My Cohort.
My Side-kick throughout time.

My Snow-capped Mountain.
The Wind caressing my face.
My Vast Green Field.

The Ivy Covered Wall
that harbors my soul … ever refusing to yield.

In a different time ...

You … would have been my Life.

You … would have been my World.

You … would have been my Everything

and I will always love you for my own special reasons.

It is just a shame … and I'm so, so sorry … that you … must never, ever know.

Maybe next time.

~Charlie Brown

   When I came-to in the morning and read what I had wrote, I had to laugh a bit. It is borderline corny, very beautiful, very telling and very sad … all at once. I shook my head, laughing and told myself :

  “*******, Sam … yer losin' it. Get your **** together, will ya?”

I guess in my stupor, I was imagining what it would have been like to write something for her. I don't know … There it was and I was stuck with it. I almost deleted it, but, my finger wouldn't press the key. As I told you before … I'd NEVER show this to her. She'd probably never speak to me again.

   As a sadder epilogue, that eventually happened. I still don't know why, but we haven't spoken in years. Maybe she sensed this emotion in me and ran away. Or maybe, just maybe … she thought I'd pushed her away somehow … but for whatever reason, we drifted apart. I guess I'll never know.  As you can see by reading this, that was never my intention. But, like I keep reiterating … It is what it is.

  One day, I called her number to catch up and shoot the breeze. I hadn't spoken to her in a few months as she'd been busy promoting her new novel and I didn't want to pester her. But … it was disconnected … I checked my emails … nothing. I'd never been so confused, she just closed me out. I didn't want to bother her. I was sure she had her reasons and if she wanted to reach out to me again, she would. She had my email and my phone number. But, for now … she was gone … and that was that.

  So, what do you think, Reader? Do I get the Tin hat … or a Badge of courage? Am I bat-**** crazy … or just eccentric? I'll leave it up to you to decide, because as I said, this all happened to me and there isn't a thing I can do about any of it. I just had to get it off of my chest. Thanks for letting me vent.

  Wherever she is … she will always mean the world to me. I can see her green eyes if I close my mine and look for them. Sometimes, on occasion, her face haunts my sleep. Still, I like to picture her, kids playing in a sprinkler behind her, digging in her garden, wearing gloves too big for her hands and a smudge of fresh dirt on her cheek … it makes me smile.

-Sam Webster
Brooklyn, New York
2013

OK, you can stop scratching your head. I'm sorry if you feel like I tricked you or was playing a prank … That was not my intention. This piece is experimental writing, of sorts. If you are wondering, it's titled “Somewhere … Out There”. But I didn't want to put a title at the head of the page, as that might have clued you in too early.

I also confess that “Sam” the narrator is, on no uncertain terms, based loosely on myself. But hey, what better way to string you along? Besides, as Stephen King said, you “Write what you know”. As far as I 'm aware, using poetry within a short story like this, or in this manner, has never been done before. Welcome to the future!

It really belongs in my “From Thee Edge” Collection with the rest of my Twilight-Zone-esque short stories. (You can now read some of these fiction short stories here, posted in my "NoPo@HePo" posts, along with some non-fiction essays. I hope you enjoy them.) But, because I pieced together several of my poems to not only tell the story, but as a vehicle to carry it along as part of it; I wanted to put it here on Hello Poetry just to see if I could convince you long enough to get you through the story … while having you believe it was me speaking to you and that it was all very real to me. Thus, making it feel real to you as you read it.

Was I having you along right up until it was signed by someone else? Or, at least until the narrator addressed himself as “Sam”?

If so, then I accomplished my mission. I'd love to hear your comments on it. If you've been reading any of my other posts, I'm sure you've figured out that I like to run wildly outside of the box sometimes. This was just, as I said, an experiment in a different way to tell a story … fiction or otherwise. As always, I hope that I took you on a journey and, more importantly, that you enjoyed it.

~Jeff Gaines
L.A.
(Lower Alabama)
2015

#riencarnation #shortstory #poetryinashortstory #experimental #experimentalwriting #fiction

Melancholy of Innocence Mar 2018

Remains of YOUR Colors of LOVE

Melancholy of Innocence Mar 2018

Remains of YOUR Colors of LOVE

I flash seven colors of your LOVE
The rainbow above my sky
Crown over my heart's being

When in your LOVE - I remember
We are so limited in our senses
Forgetting that when are we going to unite
Is just a matter of fate
Because now when we are 1000 miles away
Still at nights - In darkness and loneliness
We are always with each other

Why your LOVE colors are
Jingling bells within my heart beats?
I often gossip with your colors
Intimate musical tunes to your LOVEz

Let me congregate colors of your LOVE
Within a packet of my heart
And return back to you my SOUL
Cognative multi-color spectrum of LOVE

Though I'm not there with YOU right now
My LOVE will remind you of my colors
And like me, YOU too will stay awake
Most nights my BELOVEDz

Every breathe within beats
The timbre of your LOVE
Renders me hopelessly devoted
With your seven colors of LOVE
Always chasing me like a rainbow dew
Outside, within and around me

YOU know...
Now a days I fight with everyone I meet
Many think, I have become arrogant
It is just that I seek perfection
From everyone - to be as "PERFECT" as YOU

Belovedz,
One thing YOU did good to me
Thumb printed my name on
Your blank heart's canvas
To surrender my ETERNITY
That's how...
YOU made me YOURS
Unconditionally forever
So that YOU can
Paint on / in / within me whatever
SOUL-COLORS of your LOVE

Not a single aspect of my life
Is not untouched by your colors of LOVE

We know our LOVE will remain
Existing longer than our life-time
Our glances rains better colors palette
Better than thousand emails, letters, prose & poems
So please do not ever say
I do not know what "OUR LOVE" is

This is what
Remains of YOUR Colors of LOVE in me

Delilah Mar 2016

Colors

Delilah Mar 2016

Colors

My seventeenth year I began to see colors all these colors from people who I had always imagined had these beautiful bright amazing colors but deep down they were dark and twisted and ripped me apart to even look at them but then I started to open with colors and they were the ones that were beautiful bright amazing colors but also came with the realization that my whole family ******* ****** and of course I knew this before because I realized that I had watched those same colors explode on other people but thought nothing of it because I still believed in happiness and rainbows of others but now I make my own **** happiness and rainbows with the people whose colors are bright and beautiful just like mine so this is a poem for the people who can take their nasty dark twisted colors and shove it up their ***** while I sing I see your true colors shining through I see your true colors and that why I don’t love you

Jaide Lynne May 2014

Coloring Books

Jaide Lynne May 2014

Coloring Books

When we were young we used coloring books, full of black and white outlines just waiting for be made into something beautiful, waiting to be brought to life with colors.

When we were young the reaches of colors had no limits, we didn’t stick with what colors we are told were correct.

When we were young the princesses could be purple with green hair.

When we were young we didn’t know that the world is full of grey area, we didn’t realize that when you mix too many colors together all you get is a terrible shade of brown.

When we were young we let our imaginations run wild. We let our colors sparkle in the sun.

But, too many years with the sun beating down has faded our colors. Powerful beams slowly bleaching out the colors of joy, and sadness, rage and love. Until all that is left is white with little tinges of what used to be the worlds brightest hues turned grey.

We began to listen when we were told that the colors we had chosen were wrong. That a boy’s favorite color couldn’t be pink, that the trees and the grass had to be green, and the ocean was always blue.

The most pigmented personalities and the most vibrant people have become pastel, because it is easier to blend in with the crowd than stand out.

This world is not how it used to be, all of the color has been drained.

But, I think everyone has the potential to be filled with color. Everyone can be a light show at disney or fireworks on the fourth of july, everyone can be an easter egg, or a glow stick. Anyone can be a rainbow, they just have to let their colors be louder than the negativity of this messed up world.

So, spread your colors, blind everyone with your light, like that one teacher that doesn’t warn you before they turn on the lights. Play your music too loud, make sure that if they can’t see your colors they can hear them. Write, spill your heart out in words, stain the pages red with passion, or yellow with joy, or black when you are feeling hopeless.

Paint this world how you want,

Make the trees pink, and the grass blue,

And don’t color in the lines, because the most interesting pictures really never do.

#self #color #expression

Amitav Radiance Jul 2014

Colors

Amitav Radiance Jul 2014

Colors

We are all painters
Holding a color palette
Conceiving a painting
It’s how we mix the colors
Depending on our imagination
Whether we paint happiness
Or scenes of saddened gray
Situations yield the paintings
Sometimes splashing all colors
Or else black colors gloom
Universe has mostly dark energy
Yet, we have found our colors
To paint our abode, we inhabit
No matter, colors of joy and sorrow
We celebrate all colors
We are all painters, wielding the brush
To create new colors of hope

#love #hope #happiness #painters #joy #colors #gloom #celebrate

Crushing Love Mar 2015

My colors

Crushing Love Mar 2015

My colors

Teacher: Alright Panda what are your Favorite colors?

Me: My favorite colors are Red and Black

Teacher: Interesting colors Panda, why are those your colors?

Me: I honestly doubt you want to hear the answer to that.

Teacher: Come on Panda, tell the class why those are your colors.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In my head the decision warred to tell but then my life was already hard enough as it was......More and more my demons wanted release so finally I gave in prepared for the looks, name calling, and lonely life again.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Me: you really want to know why?

Teacher: Very much yes, we would

Me: Ok then, Red and black are my favorite colors for their meanings.

Teacher: And what are their meanings?

Me: Red, stands for The blood that is shed during death, The blood that I shed when the knife glides over my skin, The blood that can be heard rushing through your veins when the fear becomes to great....The blood that your heart leaks from the poorly covered cracks from being shattered so many times....

Teacher: (Gulps) And what about black Panda?

Me: Black.....My true color.....Black, stands for the darkness and destruction warring in my mind, body, and soul, The darkness after death, The darkness in my heart from all the hatred thrown at me, The Darkness and destruction from my inner demons who keep warm and safe at night, The Darkness that one day we will all see, because nobody can escape death....Hes one bad-*** ******* who always gets his way....Those are my colors....The colors that make me and I stand for...

Teacher: Ummm....Very...Very Interesting Panda (Gulps and steps away) You know I think it's time for lunch why don't we all go to lunch yea? ( Scurries away)

Other students: I told you she was a freak......Crazy......Belongs with the dead if you ask me.....She talks about demons so much I would be surprised if she wasn't one.....

Me: Smirks You guys should learn to keep your opinions to your self, they might get you hurt one day.... (Get's up and walks out the door leaving a note for the others)

*Note- "Roses are Red, Violates are blue, Red like your blood, blue like the sea....Keep on talking soon you will all see who the true demon is and hey it just might be me." Yours truly Panda <3

Corina Jones Jan 2013

Colors

Corina Jones Jan 2013

Colors

Colorful colors, colors everywhere.
Afar, maybe near, or just someplace over there.
Colors in quantities,
A copious amount.
Too many colors to keep any count.
Metaphorical colors aren't physically there,
But a good color-finder can sense them in the air.
True colors like to a person describe;
Who's what in what way- the how and the why.
In a colorful world, we all live and stay.
In colorful beds, at night we all lay.
With colors, there's always a great source for play.
Colors make life worth living each day.

— The End —