Monday, October 7, 2013

Color Guard





Color Guard

Drab walls the color of clams gone bad,
smells of human waste, wasted humans,
The Watched amid The Watchers.
Basic human needs met
hunger fed,
thirst quenched,
sleep accommodated.

But there are some hungers
that aren’t that easy to satisfy.
A longing for color,
Burning
with a fiery glow of its own.

The Watched beg for bright images,
 but not the colors they all wear,
 the bright orange of the ill-fitting jump suits
 and the baby poop color of rubber sandals.

They invent ways to put color in their lives.
They make eye shadow out of moistened magazine pages.
They happily collage.
Stacking purple hills of heather,
green jungle foliage,
cerulean-winged birds,
pink baby faces,
shimmering silvery dewdrops,
golden sunsets and azure seas.
Sorted, lovingly
placed and glued in patterns
that only makes sense to them.

Patterns that make
the sickly gray walls slide into nothingness
the smells evaporate from their nostrils.
The only sound in that clanging, echoing place,
the flutter of an exotic bird’s wings,
a cool tropical breeze,
a soothing balm to every hurt.

Rebekah for the Poplar Grove Muse

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