Doom and Bloom

Mantis shrimp don’t actually see more colors than us

They simply can’t blend the different shades

More eyes to make sure fuchsia isn’t azure

Most people I meet are the same

Stuck on that monochrome

Just a few shy in the temporal lobe

Black and white

Blue and Red

Doom and Bloom

The dichotomy can leave us hopeless or dead

I’m one to talk

Sometimes too much

I didn’t mean to interrupt

It’s just that, even without seeing it, we’re in this great blend before us

Quilts of ice that snap and slide aside as a rainbow rambles up from the ochre dust

Where do I fall on the spectrum?

I can’t tell you too much about cars except how to fix them

When you can’t afford the blue collar’s help

I replaced the radiator in the rain

So many greys between asphalt and sky

I can tell you a bit about alchemy and wine

Tannins coagulate and solve from blood to burgundy

I’ll randomly remember how to make a creamy alfredo like the one I learned on the line

I didn’t ask for it, the orchestra in my mind

I just try to tap dance on the different hues like good jazz

And sunlight through stained glass

As a kid I paced circles in the emerald grass

I grew up to be my baby’s bye bye guy

Bisexual, bipolar, sometimes crass

Around men and women who need me to be just what I seem

They’d hate for me to be less of a man

I’m just not a fan of the heteronormative clan

Too many awkward sleepovers

Too many friends never heard how I felt

Take it from me or from Whitman and Wilde, Rilke and Poe

This life is a colorful show

Better to grow and dangle like moss on the oak

To wear makeup and drag as more than a joke

I looked great at skate night, hair straightened, eye shadow on, nails painted

My best friend was beside himself laughing

It’s alright that you liked it, bro

Those that gripped me, I remember all of you

With fervor I gripped you too

With others I struggled, begging for slack

It’s what I do

Grip and struggle, fearful of loss

Trying to outrun a dreadful inner obsidian

I act coy like a fish in a pond

Blissfully unaware of anything beyond the water’s edge

The downside of being bigger on the inside

You get lost in yourself

Always amazed at the contradictions

We don’t see the glue firsthand

The great attractor that balks at the untangling of cosmic threads

But thank god it keeps us coming back

Always trying to make contact

It’s how my lover found me across five years and three states

In college I kissed her ex on a dare to make her care

But I admit his mauve lips were soft and warm

We commiserate in haunted taverns, plan revolutions

She makes me feel like a Koi in the wind

Flailing with pride

Trickle down economics is a hell of a ride

Tell it to the dwindling middle class

We made this year’s resolution to scale Olympus Mons

It’s ruby cliffs tell our future and past

We will make something of this blank canvas

Til then we carry on our unskilled labors

And away we indigo

I do feel like I’m getting it, though

Call a rose a cumquat and it blooms the same

Call Ellen Elliot and it’s just their next page

Jesus anointed with oil the alleged whores

Buddha let a man spit in his face before

The same man broke down in disgrace

What was it for?

More and more of this spectrum

People love who they love and don’t care if you let them