The Poetry Marathon

Hour Ten, Color

Fade to Black

“What’s your favorite color?”
an early boyfriend asked, perhaps
thinking of flowers to match
my favorite, a romantic notion
my truthful answer swiftly
nipped in the bud: “Black.”

Evolving from thrashing punk days,
mosh pit rock and grunge days,
emo goth days, and finally
soul sustaining blues,
black saw me through my style,
my mood, my life, colorless and fading

into adult depression and weight gain.
Not wishing for pity, I laughed it off,
pain masked to others that asked why
when I winked and told them “Don’t you
know black is this fat girl’s friend?”

The advent of children brought me
partially back to life, and black remained
my choice, spills, scrapes, messes
all masked by clothes in my forgiving black.

Healthy again, black still is my favorite,
the color that never fails to fulfill, a friend
enfolding me in warm, somewhat threadbare,
arms, as my life begins the slow winding
down, one day fading to the final, welcoming black.

It was always blue (wow I think this is 10)

It was always blue

 

Actually it wasn’t always blue. In college I used to say that it was black because I felt sorry for it, black because no one else ever chose it. And black is very rich indeed and I still wear it all the time, have ever since I started smoking at 18 and it’s been almost forty years but I don’t remember saying that about black but my old friend Lloyd told me that I used to say it and he thought it was funny, which is why I said it duh. And way back in sixth grade when we finally had the house painted after many years of not having the house painted after writing on walls and leaving cruel caricatures of each other on them and resting our greasy heads on them and spilling milk and sodas on them and laying on the cheap wall to wall carpeting and rubbing our grubby feet on them, that’s when I chose yellow, lemon yellow, sunshine yellow—whatever it was childhood I’m not going into it—which choice fortunately was tempered by three other walls in a pale pale creamy yellow so anyone who came to my 6^th grade slumber party could see my budding sense of restraint, my respect for the fine off-whites except they couldn’t because the furniture I’d chosen at just around that time was bright yellow nearly neon yellow and the bedspread I’d chosen for my matching twin beds was yellow yellow not-mellow yellow with some red and green. Fun fun fun. Again, not going into it. Still, over the years I joined the rest of humanity and chose everyone’s favorite color blue, blue blue. True blue, like a pack of cigarettes the parent’s smoked. Not that really, and not denim blue but navy blue is the one I like, Yale blue, Vreeland blue, and occasionally as for my wedding invitations which were an enormous and grandiose splurge a dusty grey shade known as French blue, which is I guess very nearly confederate blue—I never thought of that before—gross—but the ink was expensive and I was sure that meant my husband and I would be happy and rich and sophisticated ourselves, which we might appear to be if you stand at the other end of the football field. Ahem. And truly I’m surrounded by olive my glasses are olive, three jackets are olive, several scarves olive, I’ve had years of olive which is Saturn’s color, the color of the lord of lead, the king of failures, a color for depressives, a color for armies who traipse in the mud, a color for European landed gentry and for autumn and its various heartbreaks. Favorite sweater olive. Favorite corduroys I wish I still owned olive. But still, even today if you stop me on the street, or if just now I see the word “color” in a poetry prompt? Blue, baby.

Hour 10 – Beautiful Rainbow

I am a rainbow

But it resolves into rows

Of seven beautiful colors

When we met, it turns red

Yellow and Orange are favorite dress

To relieve my daily stress

In the rainy green valley

I often felt the smell of indigo roses

The blue sky and violet bird

Is the real reality of my life

 

New Roomba Logic

The robot you bought
Flips the rug over and breaks
Must be a bad rug

Colors

HOUR TEN

The color Purple- bellflowers,
lavender scented soaps, tulips
and eggplants- the soil is warm
idle garden glove under
the summer sun- lilac into verdant mulberry
artichokes hand-picked from the home garden

Seedlings sprouts into another flower.

Red as Sindoor, Henna, spice chai,
poppy flowers, Cardinal, watermelon,
red paprika in Goulash, Wine
and sometimes
dying embers from the ceremonial worship
crisp red roses for the wedding day
Candied Carrots- apple Murabba
in plain jars- another specialty of grandma.

Orange as pumpkins in the Halloween
Costa Rica Clementine in a supermarket
Monarch butterfly and sunset
Saffron as perfumed sunbeams

Yellow as a Sunflowers, turmeric,
dandelions in the backyard, corn cob
and school bus
Yellow sands of Arizona- handiwork of nature

Green as cactus and vines dangling from the gazebo
button flowers, lettuce in the salad bowl,
and emerald eyes of my cat

White as a snowflake, lilies, paper boats,
the moon, and stars;
The color Sapphire as the midnight sky and heirloom gemstone.

Here is my color list for you- a colorful bouquet, crayon-box,
rainbow and quaint dye shop.

Copyrighted by Ruchi Chopra, 2017.

A Quatern for Iris

A grey dove, wingtips dipped in red,
hangs from the jaws of my Iris–
a hound as old as she is shocked
at her surprising retrieval.

Look what I’ve managed to bring you–
this small dove with bloody wingtips,
she says with two eyes, one bright; one
clouded by too much excitement,

packed into so many dull years.
See, I’m wagging my tail. See,
this grey dove with a broken wing–
I caught this for you. No need for

concern over the advanced years;
success makes her spry again, makes
her stiff joints loosen with pride. Here:
a small, broken bird. Make it whole.

The Martyr

Whispered ever softly, did they
Plan the fate of whom they met.

A dark and darker room. They went in,
Dignified, to seize the day of a
Martyr in a bowl.

No questions did they ask of
Hell or spirits who are molten.

Only of Gold.

Gold was in the air.

Credit: Carl Sanburg, “Two Fish.”

A scar and a blood blister

X marks the spot
on my lip where
I was kissed by
the hollow rusted
handle of a fought-
over sledge hammer
pulled from the
fists of my nine
year old brother.

A blood blister
swelled against
my bottom front
teeth while the
outside was held
together with
a butterfly stitch,
and I wasn’t allowed
to watch tv for a week.

Hour 10: Rainbow Lorikeet

Rainbow Lorikeet

I love the bright red cardinal
And his dun-colored mate
The bold blue jay that visits me
And the robin on the gate
I sometimes see the goldfinch
And the purple martin too
The other birds who visit
Are of a duller hue
But down in wild Australia
Lives a bird that’s quite unique
Wearing every color
Is the rainbow lorikeet
His head is of a brilliant blue
His wings are shades of green
His chest is red and yellow
And every color in between
His beak is painted orange
But do not be confused
His feet are just simply gray
It was the one color left unused

(picture from https://www.pets4homes.co.uk/pet-advice/rainbow-lorikeet.html)

Gatherings

Green is my favorite color around

It fits my second favorite season spring

Fall is the best season where colors abound

Summer is the season of growing offspring

Fall can also bring ripening yellow and brown

While winter does its’ own frosty white thing

Colors abound through seasons released

So food on our table is colorful feast.

 

The gathered food for the feast we prepare

Green squash, yellow corn, red apples are set

Even the game and fowl add their colors so fair

Our family and friends all arrive well met

Each brings their best dishes to add to the fare

And the grains have been transformed into baguettes

All gathered are pleased by the colors they see

And partake of friendship and the feast with glee