Poetry Stretch Results - Colorful Poems

The challenge this week was to write a poem that is about or relies on color(s). Here are the results.

Sea Is Sound; Air Is a Door Ajar
By Steven Withrow of Crackles of Speech

Sea is sound; air is a door ajar.
Sound is glass; door is the color of plums.
Glass is brine, stippled with plum-warm rain.
Brine is black; sea is glass-colored sound.
Air is a jar of warm plums.
Sound of rain is a door:
Sea stippled, brine black, jar glass.

©2010 by Steven Withrow. All rights reserved.


Puce
by Kate Coombs of Book Aunt

You never hear red, yellow, and puce
when kindergarteners talk crayons.

Never lavender and puce when girls
and their mothers plan bridal showers.

Puce isn't painted into sunsets
in poems, or the shadows of flower petals.

It's never puce for a hero's t-shirt
or a heroine's dress, except

in historical fiction, and even then
puce is reserved for unpleasant

teapot-wielding ladies named Gertrude.
Poor puce, which sounds like "puke"

and is uncertain—dark red or a sort
of grayish purple, depending.

To finish off the indignity,
its Latin root means "flea."

--Kate Coombs, 2010, all rights reserved


Lee Wind of I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the hell do I read? left this poem in the comments.

Blue is a song
It makes me look in
A spring feeds the river
I go for a swim
Each stroke gets me nearer
To the story-filled sea
Blue is a song
And a feeling set free.


Brown
Amy Ludwig VanDerwater of The Poem Farm

Brown is a color that feels like a friend.
It's that sweater you wear every day.
Brown is cool earth in a garden you tend
on the very last weekend in May.
Brown is a quiet old cat in your lap
purring secrets into your soul.
Brown is firewood.
A nest full of eggs.
Warm oatmeal in a bowl.
If you ask my favorite color
I think of cornstalks and tea.
Let others have neon and rainbow.
Brown is the color for me.

© Amy Ludwig VanDerwater


Color Smells
By Liz Korba of Correspondence.org

The colors in a crayon box
Smell all the same, it’s true
But that’s the scent of crayons,
Not of red or green or blue.
Bright yellow smells like lemonade
Lime green like new mowed grass
Red is the rose perfume of spring
Black’s hot-tarred road - or gas.
Dark purple – that’s grape jelly
Pure white – new fallen snow
Brown is a blend of dirt and leaves
That fell some time ago.
Blue is the air beneath the sky,
Blue changes with each season
But orange has an orange smell -
For some peculiar reason…


SPRING LEAVES
by Carol Weis

Encircle me in lushness
wrap your branches
tightly about me
as I breath in your
verdant bouquet.
Envelope me in
your innocence,
the chartreuse of
your tender glow,
oh soft and delicate
leaves of spring
just one last time
before you go.

© Carol Weis, all rights reserved


Silhouettes
by Violet Nesdoly

Black cormorants claim the poles
silhouettes against the sky
knobs, columns or a spread
of wings hanging to dry.

© Violet Nesdoly (all rights reserved)


GRAY
by Diane Mayr of Random Noodling

Two months before he and Mrs. Lincoln
went to Ford's Theater, the president

had a portrait taken at Mr. Gardner's
Gallery. The photographer caught

the shadow of Mr. Lincoln. He was
by then, merely a body without its soul.

Little did John Wilkes Booth know,
his bullet would only be the coups de grace.

Note: this was based on one of the saddest photos I have ever seen. It is the quintessence of gray for me. It was taken by Alexander Gardner, who, ironically, later "shot" the co-conspirators in Lincoln's assassination.


maize
Doraine Bennett of Dori Reads

golden tassels bend
beneath yellow cornsilk sun
a buttercream breeze


sister AE of Having Writ shares a poem entitled Dressing in Black.

It's not too late if you still want to play. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll add it to the list.