Sunday 5 November 2017

Q & A




What colour's your poem? she asked.
I said,
mostly blues and greens, some yellow, some red.
Like twilight - maybe a shade of lilac –
some of it fluorescent, some grey and drab
and some parts dissolved small town mud track,
silvered power cuts with a few dabs
of starshine.  Lost fishhooks on dry riverbeds,
waving heat haze and groundnut pyramids.
Some lines white, some unavoidably black.


What colour is your poetry? 
I replied,
some quite see-through, like rainfall on the wide
lit savannahs, on which the long grass feeds
and grows its shadow, neat corn-rowed mornings,
windows missing louvres of glass. Low-speed
smiles, bright swimsuits flashing in the hot springs
in deep forest. The negative space between
points of bison horns, the dragon fly sheen
of streams. And some as opaque as safekeeping.



16 comments:

  1. How evocative and beautiful.
    I have to ask: What colour are your memories? And your heart?

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    1. Thank you. Heart's probably a muddy bloody nondescript colour :) but memories, for the most part, sparkly gemstones and candy-coloured too, for which I'm seriously grateful.

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  2. Hi Nila - wonderful to read ... colours really add to our vision and view of our world around us ... I think probably I'm Persian colours and African reds and ochre - then of course the English greens ... just a wonderful world we live in - if our colours match others' view of the world ...

    Gorgeous - cheers Hilary

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    1. Thanks Hilary. You are so right. Glad that we human 'beans' can see a wider range of colours as compared to many other mammals.

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  3. this poem paints such a vision of word colors. Richness abounds

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  4. Incredibly descriptive - like it's a alive.

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  5. This is pure genius! Love it and the way it makes me feel.

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    1. So glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for stopping by.

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  6. That's a very unique way to approach the subject. Loved it.

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    1. Hmmm...is it an approach I'm wondering? Didn't quite occur to me to think of it that way. Glad you enjoyed it, though.

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    2. Well, I probably could have used a more appropriate word than "approach."

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    3. Not at all. Your word choices are always thoughtful, nothing wrong with approach - just that it makes my poetry sound more systematic than it is. I struggle regularly for more control, more 'organisation', so...

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