Nothing Rhymes

Oct 6 2015

It’s said that nothing rhymes with orange.

The orphaned colour of verse

that gets no love.

Like pumpkins

the day after Halloween.

When all the jack-o-lanterns go dark,

each abandoned orange gourd

left forlornly by the curb.

Where they sit, loveless,

succulent pulp drying out

innards gutted.

With toothless mouths, hollow eyes

vacant smiles,

slumping skulls

lobotomized.

Reduced to trash.

Like the morning after the bacchanal.

Like the make-up

you slept in.

They splat

on macadam, and cul-de-sacs,

tossed

by vandals and pranksters.

Are cast-out, flattened, scrapped,

smashed by passing cars.

Such unforgivable waste,

in place of pie, canned, strained,

seed, drink, pureed.

Pumpkin cake, pumpkin bread.

If only the starving

could forage the streets

orange would be redeemed.

A surfeit of squash,

the multitudes fed.

This poem wrote itself in literally 5 minutes. Then a few more minutes for minor tweaking. When a poem happens like this, I both love it, and mistrust it. On the one hand, inspiration feels like channelling: as if I'm simply taking dictation from some higher power. But it also feels too easy: doesn't anything worthwhile require struggle?

I quite clearly remember being told that "orange" is impossible to rhyme. I can't agree: I find rhyming the easiest part of poetry, and think everything has a rhyme. So when I thought I could complete the circle of the poem by reuniting the orphaned orange with its family, "forage" immediately came to mind. And there are numerous other "sideways" rhymes for that supposedly difficult colour, words such as "porous" and "warrant" and "chorus". I like the way the ending calls back to the first 2 lines, and gives a sense of completion: how orange is no longer an orphan, it has found its rhyme; and how nothing goes to waste.

I know I shouldn't take this seasonal celebration so seriously. But it's not just the bleak aftermath of discarded and rotting pumpkins. It's also the way our culture has, as it invariably does, grotesquely inflated everything: a kids' innocent holiday turning into an adult party; ghosts in simple white sheets turning into sexy nurses; a quaint North American tradition turning into a worldwide extravaganza of consumption. And I remember how greedy I was as a kid: getting the best stuff; accumulating as much as possible; hoarding my prizes. It's as if we have so much and have become so jaded, we need to turn the dial higher and higher in order to feel and enjoy and be satisfied.