Midway upon the journey of passion,
I found the path of “blue” split into three —
“azure,” “cobalt,” and “lapis” — and remembered my editor,
who lived during the time of false and lying ideals,
lambast me for details, for not hearing
the difference.
How hard a thing it was to say
what was this New York I described, savage and paramount,
which, in memory and contemplation,
held above itself a sky in December
under which my protagonist searched —
for color.
“Blue,” childish, would cause a nasty knee-jerk
of rejection, but “cobalt” would feel
an overdone product of Thesaurus.com.
I could not well recount how this lifestyle I entered
from the security of financial investing, but here I was,
sending me.
The New Yorker was a mountain,
and at the summit — I smiled thinking —
the paths became one, trustworthy and true,
effused with morning, that the natural foot I reached
couldn’t be like the top
I pondered.
My fear was a little quieted,
being this far, a survivor of the night
of MFAs and Pushcarts, to see
where the wheels in wheels in wheels
ceased spinning.
I turned back to the paths, my weary body
rested, and chose to challenge the “cobalt” slop —
my keyboard-familiar fingers foot-stepping —
and instantly a memory of the gorgeous barista,
born in September, reminded me “cobalt” was an option in
Home Depot.
I attempted “lapis,” and imagined readers wondering
why I needed to impress; “azure” suggested a greed
to use words best left
behind.
I stepped back and looked toward my feet —
“blue” — and dropped through the leafy debris and floor — a trap —
down, perhaps to sentence two
or into your trashcan, praying that,
in the end, I didn’t end up
frozen. But I had hope
as I fell: it just took the right look
to make a page
tear-worthy.
.
.
.
For more, please visit O.G. Rose.com. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram and Facebook.
Excellent work! All these varietals of the blues remind me of Heidegger's "Language in the Poem" his interpretation of Georg Trakl's poetry.
"The soul is called to go under. Then it is so after all: the soul is to end its earthly journey and leave the earth behind! Nothing of the sort is said in the verses just quoted. And yet they speak of "going under." Certainly. But the going under of which these verses speak is neither a catastrophe, nor is it a mere withering away in decay. Whatever goes under, going down the blue river, Goes down in peace and silence.Into what peace does it go? The peace of the dead? But of which dead? And into what silence? Something strange is the soul on the earth. The stanza in which this sentence belongs continues: . . . Ghostly the twilight dusk. Bluing above the mishewn forest ... Earlier, the sun is mentioned. The stranger's footfall goes away into the dusk. "Dusk" means, first, darkness falling. "Dusk bluing." Is the sunny day's blueness darkening? Does it fade in the evening to give way to night? But dusk is not a mere sinking of the day, the dissolution of its brightness in the gloom of night. Dusk, anyway, does not necessarily mean the twilight of the end. The morning, too, has its twilight. The day rises in twilight. Twilight, then, is also a rising. Twilight dusk blues over the "mishewn," tangled, withered forest. The night's blueness rises, in the evening. The twilight dusk blues "ghostly." This "ghostliness" is what marks the dusk. We must give thought to what this oft-named "ghostliness" means. The twilight dusk. is the sun's descending course. That implies: twilight dusk is the decline both of the day and of the year."