Colour Charts
Cycle
1
I
Brown is the colour of coffee, chocolate, roasted flesh, earth and the
skin of more than half the human race.
Brown is the merging of all the colours of the wheel
That spins and spans the gulf between heaven and earth,
Green are the leaves and grass that grow out of the brown earth,
And the expectorated snot that gleams
From the sunny grey concrete.
Blue is the sky in daylight,
The poppies that grow among the grazing brown yaks of Tibet,
And blue are the eyes of pale skinned beings
Whose white reign of power teeters over the precipice
Above the dazzling blue sea.
Red is the blood that spatters the grey concrete,
Soaks the brown earth,
And stains the green grass
Underneath the blue sky.
Red is the blood that pumps through our veins.
Brown skin and pale skin,
Sustaining and enlivening
The lover’s caress
And the wife-beater’s
frenzy.
Yellow is the gold
Hid in stone between orange topaz and purple amethyst
And yellow the sun’s blinding fury
Trapped in sunflowers and in dandelions blooming on front lawns
forever.
Black
And white.
Light and negation of light
That warms the brown earth
That shoots forth the green grass
That feeds the black and white cows
That feed us with their white milk,
Yellow butter and cheese
And flesh red with dripping blood.
And the black and white cows
Rest in the shade
On the green and yellow grass
Beneath the blue sky of summer—
And this is the first day,
And the last night;
The last day, and the first night,
And God saw that it is good.
II
The colour is pure, stark,
Amethyst transmuting into magenta, to crimson,
To scarlet, topaz, beryl and blinding emerald
To the most violent turquoise fire-heart of sapphire,
To amethyst again—
So another water droplet is transfigured by the morning sun
On the naked branch outside the window
Where hangs a pendant crystal channeling
The new daylight,
Shattered spectrums and broken rainbows
That stain the sparsely decorated white apartment walls.
The colours merge into white light,
Mercilessly illumining the naked foot,
Granting brutal emphasis
To early varicose veins
Gathering like a pencil sketched tattoo
On the ankle,
And the slightly ragged, stained big toenail
Which the young woman is painting crimson;
And the light gleams blinding white
On the naked muscular back
Of her sleeping lover.
Her ovaries conceal the promise of new life
Made fecund in loving embraces,
A promise of new life,
Of a new self,
Microscopic zygote that betrays
Those tender nights of passion.
So we have had our beginnings:
Childhood played out on violently green lawns,
Or shining beige linoleum,
Or brown fertile earth,
Or urine-stained concrete:
The colour wheel spins
In the rhythm of the planet
And the iridescent spider silk
That sways in slow motion,
Across forest trails
In gentle breezes of early summer evenings.
III
Where did you get that dress?
That shade of red is you:
The colour of fire engines and blood, the colour of roses and peonies,
The colour of your daughter’s hair last week,
Of your grandson’s mohawk,
Red sky at morning and night,
Warning and delight
For red is the heart of the fire,
The soul of the flame
We have banked,
Doused,
Driven underground
Only to erupt again
And lick with hot tongues
Heels of guccied and aldoed feet.
Sex is the heart of that fire,
But spirit is the soul of the flame.
Red as the blood that flowed that day
When the earth shook and night visited
The middle of the day,
When God screamed out his death agony,
Red as the cleansing blood
That flowed from the sacred feet,
Preparing the way
For new life,
And life a thousand times ten thousand times over,
Onto the grey stone, the brown earth,
The green and yellow grass
On the holiest day of a Palestinian spring.
The blood that stains the virgin bride’s sheet
Is the blood that coloured the guillotine blade
And neck of Marie Antoinnette’s severed head:
And the red blood
Of martyrs, saints and Awshwitz victims,
Casualties of Abu Ghreib, Guantanamo, Srebrenica and
St. Bartholemew’s day,
Meat from the slaughterhouses
Of Pol Pot, George Bush, and Herod the Great:
It has all flowed in, it has all flowed in,
Soaking, drenching, life into life,
The thirsty brown earth;
Dragon’s teeth sown in tended furrows
Bringing forth to life
The violent seed
That chokes our planet
With thistles, weeds and blood-dripping thorns.
The morning cry becomes the evening lullaby
For the mother who survives
Her childbed agony.
There is no birth, no life,
No descending of the flaming dove,
But for the shedding of blood,
But for the agony of the red blood
That screams for vindication, vengeance and justice
From hearts of bedrock and stone.
Second Cycle
I
White seagulls drift
On invisible air currents
In the blue sky,
Vultures reincarnated as doves
Descending now and picking clean the season’s roadkill,
Till the yellow-white bones are scattered
Across the yellow strip that divides and brightens
Into left and right hemispheres of an asphalt brain
The rural highway.
A red Volvo rolls by—
The driver is wearing a blue and gold silk tie
He purchased in Bangkok on a recent dirty holiday,
Just after closing an international deal
Resulting in less millet for the blue earthen bowl
Out of which a family in Africa has been eating.
He is on his way to a tryst
With the young woman in the green dress
He met in one of the trashy bars
He loves to go slumming in—
She is the ex-partner of the young stud in the purple tank top
Who is driving the grey van behind him.
(He used to beat her: her reason for finally leaving him.)
The young woman will tie him down
With the black electrical cord
That is coiled like snakes twining ‘round the healer’s staff—
The cane she will beat him with—
Until the red welts have
Begun to form like international boundaries on a map
All over the smooth terrain of his freckled white back.
The gulls are circling in the blue sky
Above the shining green fields,
Spying their next victim on the highway
That is littered on both sides
With red and blue cigarette packages.
A yellow butterfly lights on a red poppy
Blooming next to a discarded green bottle
That stings with the sun’s brilliance
The weary eyes
Of matrons obsessed with colour charts,
And coordinating pink and jade green upholstery
With bronze broadloom
And taupe coloured draperies.
In poorly-lit studios
Artists wrestle with toxic pigments
And lethal solvents,
Capturing, interpreting
And bringing to life on overpriced canvas
The mystic immediacy of colour born in light,
Light born in colour
In that sacred nanosecond when it strikes the eye,
Seen and being seen for the first time,
Yellow butterflies, red poppies
And shining green beer bottles.
A muskrat, flattened by the red Volvo bleeds crimson
All over the yellow line;
The white gulls are descending.
II
Blue and green are the colours of the earth
And the catseye marbles
And the t shirts and jeans of the children
Who roll them,
And blue and green are the school building walls
Against which they negotiate
Their little glass spheres.
Blue and green are the massive hydrangeas
That give grandmothers more pleasure and delight
Than years of nights endured in their husbands’ flaccid arms.
The gulls are circling in the blue sky,
Blue like summer hydrangeas.
The red Volvo is parked
In the driveway of the ramshackle blue house
Across the street
From the children who, next year, will be lighting up
White cigarettes
After the last cat’s eye marble
Has been rolled in contrapuntal rhythm with this blue and green earth
Into dark and fathomless asphalt space.
The muskrat’s bones have been picked clean by the gulls,
And gleam white as the clouds gathering in the west,
White as the gulls’ gleaming white breasts,
White as the cane which the woman in the green dress
Will use to beat her prone and delighted lover.
III
The romaine is green, tossed with bronze heirloom tomatoes
And purple raddicchio,
That will be recycled in shit every bit as brown as
The chocolate mousse.
The candles are red,
And the yellow flames hurt the eye with their swollen energy.
The green and blue marbles were long ago buried in the landfill
Where poppies once bloomed amid green bottles.
Diamonds glitter, imprisoned rainbows from
The old woman’s earlobes and crinkled white throat.
The pomegranates in the centre-piece gleam crimson
With gold lights caught from the fire,
Metaphorical ovaries.
The men, sleek and power-suited
With their immaculately coutured wives
Once shot green and blue marbles on the black schoolyard asphalt,
Just before the woman in the green dress
Perished across the street
In her own red blood,
When she slashed her wrists one hot summer night.
Her lover has become wealthy.
He is no longer young,
The colours of life denouce
The death held at bay,
Being swallowed
In gulps of golden claret
Into the craw
Of middle class denial.
Two lanes have been added to the highway.
The gulls still circle in the blue sky.
An elegant young wife
Has told no one,
Not even the psychiatrist whom she blows twice a week,
That she wants to take a can of gasoline
And empty it all over and all around her house,
The German and Italian cars,
The landscaped grounds,
And then along the yellow line down the middle of the expanded highway,
An unbroken, gleaming trail of fossil fuel,
Coloured amber like the cognac after dinner.
From the top of the hill
She will sit in the long grass
And drop a lit match
And watch as the fire serpent of retribution,
Flame of living gold
Descends on the house,
The foreign cars,
The manicured lawn,
The red candles and pomegranates,
Engulfing them all in one purgatorial flame.
She will watch from the hill
As the flame rises in judgment,
Burning in the eternal night,
Burning forever.
Tomorrow she’ll do this.
Her shrink will see that she is acquitted.
After dessert—
She has lost track of the conversation
And reaches for her gold lighter
And blue cigarette package
With warnings of death
Emblazoned in black and white.
One day she will strangle her mother-in-law who sits across the table
Garroting her with her own pearls
Young woman and crone together succumbing
Underneath the brown mahogany table
In presence of the golden flame
And pomegranates of dappled crimson.
Third Cycle
I
The sunlight in the crystal spray of the public fountain
Betrays the colours of our origins—
From God’s promise to Noah
To the promised apocalypse,
So the rainbow of promise spans from biblical antiquity
To post-apocalyptic aspirations.
This is the light from which we have sprung,
And this is the light into which we shall return.
The red of the spectrum
Is the deep red with which the girl seated at the edge of
The fountain
Has coloured her hair for this week,
On an inspiration that came with the blood
Of her recent period,
Red as the parrots of Brazil and New Guinea,
Red as the butterflies and hibiscus flowers of Costa Rica,
Red as the blood of her female vindication,
And the blood of the martyred and slain
That soaks into the hallowed brown earth
Making it fertile again.
Red is the colour of pomegranates, rubies and ovaries.
Red is the edge of the sacred sword
That swathes across the wheatfields and vineyards
Of earth and heaven,
Bringing in the bloodied sheaves,
The vintage wine
Of the blessed blood that saves us.
The girl’s tattoos are green and blue,
Against the gold-white gleam of her naked arm
That splashes through the iridescent fountain spray.
Yellow is the sheen of purest gold,
Buttercups, and the cellophane coffee crisp wrapper
Crumpled and blowing like a golden tumbleweed,
A perished memory of the corporate greed
The empty stomach and the bleeding back
Of the child who picked the cacoa beans
That sweetened today your fat dirty mouth in a nice light snack.
Like a yellow wraith it flutters and sails in the breeze
Across the dusty pavement,
Ending at the stone wall stained by the fragrant yellow piss
Last night by a drunken male reveller.
From the brown earth springs the tender green blade and shoot—
Green is the colour of spring,
Granny smith apples,
And the sports car racing down the rural highway
Flanked by green fields and trees,
Bearing contraband of white Peruvian cocaine and green Brazilian
emeralds,
The earth’s sacred green
Mined from the midst
Of the defoliated green rainforest,
The rapidly dwindling lungs of the earth.
Cut and polished and set in platinum and gold
That glitter from crinkled white throats
And soft pink fingers
Of the destroyers of the earth.
The youth on the skateboard would be naked
But for his cut-off jeans,
Nipple and nose rings
And green and blue tattoos, like the girl’s,
That decorate in vinous wreathes
His shining pale skin.
He rolls up to the girl with the red hair—
She will never tell him how near he came to fathering their child—
They do not see the spectrum,
Not even the blue and violet bands at the bottom,
Bluer than the cigarette package he has just pulled
From his pocket,
Bluer than the pale-eyed gaze he sets on
The girl’s
tattooed arm,
and bluer than the smoke that rises from the lit end
of the glowing orange tip
of the cigarette he has just lit her.
II
The sun has moved,
Though actually the earth’s position has merely shifted
In its perpetual rotation,
The rainbow of promise has vanished,
Subsumed in the golden-white light,
Alpha and Omega,
Beginning and end.
White, the colour of snow,
Of heroin and cocaine,
And salt consecrated and sprinkled across the defiled earth,
To make it clean, to make it holy;
And white are the clouds
And the spray of the fountain
And the salt spray of the ocean
That smashes the sea god’s fury
Against the hard black rocks.
White is the mother of all colours..
But light is the father of white.
And the mother of white
Is the black yin,
Consort to the white yang,
That spins and wheels together
Like the changing phases of the moon
That pulls on the ocean tide,
And teases the red blood
That keeps us alive,
Launching us like lost catamarans into its ebb and flow
As we dance into the night
And into the dark,
Perpetual carnival mardi-gras,
Dance of death,
For black is the mother
And death is the daughter,
And the daughter and mother of the light
Is the yin,
The dark secret place,
Universal womb
From which all has sprung,
Manic kaleidoscope of created order,
Self-destructing and giving birth to chaos
Re-ordering the colours,
The black mother and the father light,
As they dance in mutual synchronicity
From the primal to the final promise
Across the radiant arc of the covenant
That shines in the crystal spray.
III
The blue and green peacock in the garden
Feeds among the red and yellow roses,
And stretches his shining blue neck to reach at the golden wheat
Scattered before the sundial.
He rises on copper and granite wings to the top of the garden wall.
Depending on the angle of the light
His train can shine emerald, gold, or copper, or sapphire,
The iridescent eyes staring but not seeing
The intertwined limbs of the lovers rolling in the shade
Of the laurel hedge that grows
On the other side of the pomegranate tree
That flourishes in the centre of the garden.
The peacock screams into the light-dappled air,
Drowning, but not silencing the lovers’ stifled cries
And another red pomegranate has fallen to the ground.
The paving stones shine like ivory, gold and pearl in the midday sun;
The lovers sleep naked in the cool shade and the peacock faces the sun.
They haven’t noticed the brown rats
Vying with black ravens
For the fallen pomegranate;
No one has found the gate that leads in and out of the garden,
Our starting and our finishing point
In our pilgrimage along the mystic sundial
Where soon we must all come to rest in its longest shadow
Alongside the sleeping lovers.
And soon all beginnings spring forth from all endings,
For the day begins and ends
And begins again in darkness,
In the longest shadow,
And still the light beckons,
Though the darkness tempts and beguiles.
They will merge together in the centre of the golden city
Where the light and darkness,
The night and the day
Co-mingle among the entwined and gleaming limbs of the sleeping lovers,
Where they will rekindle again into being the sacred and eternal fire
That will recreate the day and the night,
And will gather together their offspring darkness and light,
Merging them together
And making them
One
And the very same.
No comments:
Post a Comment