grey fairy
of ash, and inbetween
whispered its nothings to me
in the dark light of afterdusk
silent and still and ever screaming

on the parapet of city skyline
it perches without heed
the grey fairy of ash and nothing
smiles its grey smile and
beats its grey wings

solitude marks the height of my contentment
no agreements to make
I don't have to see faces
nods smiles masked aggression
I don't have to act
I don't have to trade facade for facade
with my peers
do I even have peers?

at night, I feel a stillness
so deep, so harsh, so honest
I don't have to live this lie
explain why I'm fine
why everything is fine
because, it's not
nothing's fine

I am a million clashing universes
filled with endless dying stars
and I reach out
to the other universes
and shrink back
  back
          and at night
I fill the stillness
  the stars collapsing
every synapse bending
toward destruction

no want
               no need
                             no crying out for more

at night there is no other
no one to say my name falsely
and when I sleep
the ocean of my subconscious
carries me to sleeping cures
takes me away for years
to great expanses of colorful
living worlds
where I feel
where my emotions are tangible
solid
and
       they keep me company for
a millennia
         I wake to this doll world
where a friend asks
how are you doing
and she's doing it out of obligation
                                                and there's no color
and I have no emotion
and I feel nothing

Life is the waiting room for the exploration of that dream world

and every night
I taste it
I touch it
I breathe in its vibrance
and the only want
is to never wake
to this grey world
to never have to answer

"fine"

again

Have you ever been so alone
that even loneliness is not there?
all the world becomes grey
and not seem to care
I’ve been in such a state
for a long time now
doesn’t matter anymore,
life goes on anyhow.

© Ali Ashraf

when consumed with the torturous thought of growing old and just
wanting to end it now
is when i truly feel the most
clinical.
depression
the crux of the matter i’m just
recovering from past lives i cannot imagine
grey days are days i wish eternal death on myself
all of me, my entire soul, body, thought, potential, existence
gone.

ABOVE THE FUCHSIA COLORED CITY
IS A FRENCH ROSE COLORED SKY,
COLORED AS ANOTHER NAME
OTHER THAN THE CLOUDS OF WHITE
SALT AND BONES.

THE CITY'S AIR SMELL OF GREY
ELEPHANT'S BREATH AND POETRY.
I BLAME THE LEMONADE  COLORED
RAIN THAT DIDN'T FALL TODAY
FOR THIS CONUNDRUM.

MAYBE THE RAIN IS PROBABLY
SOMEWHERE SITTING STILL
IN THE HOT SEAT OR MAYBE IN
HEAVEN'S COLORLESS TIGHTLY
CLOSED LAP.
SITTING
               THERE
                          THINKING
                             ­                WHAT
                                                       COLORS                      
                                    ­                               GO
                                                                ­         BEST
                                                            ­                     WITH
                                                                ­                         WILD
                                                                ­                    EMOTIONS?

Grey is the gentle night sky on a moonlit night
A small scurrying field mouse
A soldiers greatcoat as he runs through a trench

Grey is the gentle lake in twilights sight

Grey is the color of the last heartbeat

Grey sounds like the feathers of an Owl
Without sound as it sails to its prey
Without sound it steals its last heartbeat

Grey is the sound of the gallows
The last struggle

Grey feels like soft velvet
A rabbits Fur
The feeling of sweet loves embrace

But Grey also feels like loneliness
On a rainy night, when love is needed most

Grey tastes of Rot
Of decay and death
And of the sweetest cinnamon

Grey tastes like the old ways

Grey smells like the trenches
***** and old
Filled with pride and death

Men dying for their country
So that one may be the winner of the world

you are the color in between all of the other colors
you don't care about the spectrum, you are an entity
i don't love you to the moon and back, i love you more than all of the stars in the galaxy
i love the way you capture everything i've ever loved
you are darkness
you are light
you have depth
you are whole
but that doesn't mean you're perfect
you are unlike anything i've ever seen
you are magical
you are the feeling i got when my dad tucked me in at night
you are as sweet as the memory of me dancing and singing in the rain up and down the street i grew up on
you are beautiful
but that word is so cliché
it could never define you
you are something that i've dreamed of
you are like déjà vu
you aren't like the nightmares that follow me into the daylight
you are what holds out a hand and tells them to stop
you are the feeling of having ten blankets on you but still being comfortably cool
you are the nicest pillow i've ever laid my head upon
you are the reason my tears stop pouring
but sometimes you are the reason they pour
because you are so complex
and i long to understand you and fear i never truly will
because you are grey
you are everything and nothing
empty and full
the space in between
you're indescribable
so this poem with incomplete sentences and no capitalization
can't come close
to everything that you mean to me
you believe you are a spec of nothingness
and that people can walk by you and not remember you
but you're unforgettable
you're captivating
you're the emotion in my ellipses
you're... my favorite color

Black
As coal
As moonless nights
As ebony trees and human hearts
Black is my life

Red
As the burning flames
As a lover's heart
The color of blood covering my hands
Color of ****** and innocent cries
Red is my life

Grey
As the long winter nights
And the ever lasting clouds
As the dull soul amid a crowd
And the ruins of a once beautiful town
Grey is my life
 
My life used to be filled with colors
every shade the eye could see
Then they were stolen one after the other
Until I was left with only three