Seeing Red - Aug 28 2025

 

Seeing Red

Aug 28 2025

This business with colours has me confused. 

How did envy turn green

sadness blue?

Or depression skip indigo

and go straight to black?

How is yellow cowardice,

while purple’s royalty

as well as prolix prose?

And why assume 

that blue is boy and pink girl

when they used to be reversed?

Now that pink is also gay

loud, proud, and clear,

while the rainbow’s still hope

but also queer.

Grey, of course, means old.

But also unclear

overcast

a bore

 — a mere coincidence, I’m sure.

While black is a raised fist

of power, pride, persistence.

But also victimized, and  oppressed,

the consummate outsider.

And white

  — which may or may not be a colour

depending on your politics —

is the flag of surrender,

but also purity and cleanliness

and the sum of all the rest.

Although I get seeing red;

the colour of arousal

engorgement 

sex

   . . . a baboon’s cherry bottom,

skin suffused with blood.

So who knows what will become

of tangerine and ochre

saffron and merlot,

of amethyst and umber,

cotton candy, bubblegum

buttercup and plum?

If the human eye

can see up to 10 million shades,

will our metaphors run out

before the colours do?