The Colors of Love Whisper

I. White, Dreaming, of Peace

Blue / Purple / White
The colors are blending and rising and falling
In eyes as shades of the end of the day
Breathless and careworn, plaintive for release
She reaches for
Blue / Purple / White.

Mind thundering heart screaming
Fists clenched tears streaming '
Waking is perseverance.
From one dream two emerge
Distinct realities, one hers
The other without.
She is reborn to dying every day.

When she was a child,
She tried to understand'�why she liked girls more than boys
Why she couldn't tell anyone as much
Instinctually, recoiled.

She remembers the day:
Out in the park, simply radiant
Invoked by the call of April to sit and be
On a weekend pointing to the end of seventh grade
And saw a classmate she saw almost everyday
But never saw this way.

II. The Setting of the Blue Moon

'I love me, with you,'
the words dripped from her lovers lips
succulent nectar of security; serene earth, wilderness tamed
Their lips met and married in torrents of cool azure water'

She was so young, unsure.
Worse, different: individual.
The disapproving and wary glances of the teachers at school
Startled her. She overheard them at lunch:
'It's an abomination'�
'What kind of parents raised her'�
'God will punish her'�
They always whispered in righteous voices
then Mrs. Kimble went home to her
husband (who drank, and beat her).

No doubt they, two monsters, felt destined.
When they loved long into the moonlight
It was an evolution beyond nature:
(blue) Purple White

The gravity of an unrelenting hatred pulls
Great feelings asunder;
The intolerant sickened empty collective
Works like a hundred thousand zealous fanatics
To eclipse each flicker of identity.

Fading away'�purple white'�'�blue

III. A Road Trip Proving Pink Is a Self Evident Liberty

During the last year of high school, Columbus Day vacation
They escaped to Vermont, for a chance to love each other.
Yes, a furtive escape just to love.

The rejoicing pair held hands
Sang the hit songs of the week on
The top forty radio station
Until they hit Massachusetts, then it was Melissa Ethridge
Shaking the factory speakers of her '95 Nissan
Until they quaked with unrepentant pride.

'Deana, I can't believe how much I love you,'�
Her lover had said, poking her head out the window
While they gassed up in Lowell.
Her chest nearly exploded, and she leaned her head
Against the car and laughed with Deana
So long she spilled the gas
And they laughed even harder.

They shared a battered cabin in an isolated campground
Closing for the season at the end of the weekend
Almost empty save a few day trippers and motor home types.
When the rain came they hardly noticed
fixing a precarious fire in the fireplace
And tweaking a plank in the door handle
Against the creatures of madness
Before sleeping soundly at long last.

Morningtime, a hike in the drizzle punctuated by astonishment
Regarding jewel weed still standing
The continuum of wildlife responding to civilization
How stunning the pigment of eyes is
'Your eyes, no your eyes'�
The silence of the Green Mountains.

Monday morning was nothing short of the worst news:
Diagnosis of a terminal illness.
She knew time was crumbling away
Her parents suspected 'something' '
Why didn't she have a prom date?
Why did she spend so much time with Ayli?
Why did she stop attending Sunday services?

It was Bob Dylan for the ride home.
They spoke less, laughed only once
Remembering the gas spilling incident
As they passed that filling station,
And sang 'Tangled Up in Blue'�
But she was ensconced in Ayli's pink camisole ' everything was pink!

A few weeks on the far side of Halloween,
Mom and dad came with an intervention
Sincerely convicted in behavioral modification as a modern wonder
And used it to smash God's intricate design
The truth of Ayli and Deana, if only their own truth.
The mallet came down, the sparks flew and then burned out
And Deana sat trembling, an abject horror heaving and clinging to her back.

IV. Intervention Interlude

A winter passed by.
Thinking to restore normality
She allowed a Man.
His brick wall arms locked her safely away
From the past, from dying repressed hopes
But mostly, it was a good ruse to fool the demons:
Dissolved.

Blue. Black. What have you,
Tender deception, a round of boxing.

Being a Man, he filtered the flow of feelings routinely.
She never really knew him
never really knew
never really
Love, locked away for fear of feeling it?
But he justified: It was the pressure really, 'just the pressure.'
Things always get better if you give them space
Everything he did
Because he LOVED HER.
Dammit couldn't she see that!? (That hand chopping the air)

She: 'wasn't good enough you see'
She: ' it was all her fault'
(He): 'really did push himself hard'
She: 'should try to be more understanding'
(He): 'it was really nothing anyway'
She: 'what's a few more bruises in life'
Tumbling down the nightmare slopes in her mind
A memory: dreams of flying, she is a folded carpet
Making the pilgrimage to Those wild places
The superlative of life; Singular love
(and the correlative: hiding under a yellow maple
during a soft October shower'

Such a conflict of two worlds!)
Then, within the real dreams she saw the stalking visage
Of surrender
beckoning from a cemetery
And she rushed the stone wall crying
'i'm here take me.'

and it was only an old woman in dreary habit
mourning a lost son.

Had she changed? Was she cured?
By all deceits, it seemed,
Her parents chirping gleefully at the strong pair of arms
(if they only knew how strong) at
The dinner table. It was a puerile game of make-believe,
That made the monster affable
Conditionally, she had to genuflect, to it and the kingly uppercuts.

Tissue to dab her nose. Cover up for the shiner.
A card to thank mom for the lovely roast pork.

V. Black and the Great Dictator

Oh,
he was a man's man alright.
Sometimes he wondered why he feigned to put up a fight.
Put up with her.
That exasperated sigh
Another little white lie.

'Song of descents'�
Many had come before, stubborn in their inconsistency,
But!
he did nothing wrong really
he was just playing that game and she was playing hard to get,
not a person or an enemy or merely an object.
Quarry.

See. You just have to be firm with women.
That's what dad always said.
Now there was a man to emulate.
Pillar of Strength.
Column of Control.
There was no problem that
Direction, firmness, and (denial) couldn't overcome.
A shot of bourbon.
or a belt.
or a switch.
It was the same with other things too:
The niggers, and the spics too, goddamn them.
That's what's the matter with this country today!

'a psalm of david'�
Mom always stood by in the wings
'I'll get supper ready,'� she'd say, turning away,
Then dad would slam the table.

Pillar of Hate.
Column of Castigation.

'to the director of music'�
Nighttime, rallying his disingenuous intentions
Ranks of black-shirted soldiers
Storming the countryside, fanatic eyes bulging and bloodshot
Quaking beneath their idol, the Great Wizened Man
Sallow with age
eyes ablaze
With masculine fire.
The masses worship the diseased and rotting male symbol
Resolved after years of conquest
standing amidst a history ravished before millions,
and offers his hand in salute against the solid sky
stained with industrial progress and the rising
plumes of oil smoke, the sooty valediction of cremated innocence,
his face crimson with rancor.

'You have been indoctrinated!'�

With rabid snarls and guttural shrieks, joyfully
the masses set the
Last of the wilderness ablaze
Black!
Beat the children
Black!
Strangle and bomb each other for fossil fuels
Black!
The flames become an inferno
Screams of ghastly anguish rise
From all the homes, the schools
Churches: back rooms: planted fields: tundra:
In mermaids; sirens ' campfires, galleries
Forlorn, wretched, inconsolable
Whenever hope
BLACK. BLACK. BLACK

One day she stopped at the supermarket and heard Bob Dylan
And she thought, 'Do I remember'�everything in pink?'�
VI. White, White, White Rainbow

It burst her. Back open, over into, across the sky.
Her self discovery caged imploded to
One dense construct '
Longing to be.
Ravishing in truth
raised up for adjudication
and found good.

She was when she finally broke down.
She could disperse into to a million singing tears
Each a brave witness of self love
Bearing a missive that all of her
Right or wrong, black or blue, beaten or free'�
The living and the dying
Was (preposterous!) something magical in itself.

she just hoped the splinters
Wrought from her own beleaguered soul
Might someday pierce a kindred spirit,
And create a unique perspective in them both
An amorphous understanding,
floored by the chance to survive.

And here, in the moment of meeting herself for the first time,
She found any color at all.

VII. Flames of Evergreen

She asks you:
Can you suspend your disbelief, can you lay aside
your cherished traditions
and see the propositional person that excels in balance?

Here she is, standing at her mirror.
You have never met her, but in your hands you hold the blue and the black. Her plea is to never know again
Brutality, to love pink and Ayli again,
To have the audacity to ask God to bless her too.

Of her past, she is certain. The forest of Vermont was as natural as her tender dreams and the world beneath the sheets
The love fire in a soft cotton fort, in a cabin in the realm of evergreens.

This love, as natural as flames of evergreen.

VIII. Limpid, Receiving Heart

Sudden absence is the advent of change.
She was done suffering for feeling,
too few gatherings,
too many renunciations.

She shrugged the duffle bag over her shoulder
And slammed the door shut
Fired the car up without waiting for the engine to warm;
she drove out into the street.
At the stoplight came the first uncrafted drops of fear
Of a come clean plane forming on the horizon,
the welcome home party ready,
to banish her from unity eternally
or show her a seat at the best supper ever,
and no more warring with awakening again.
Dying for the last time '
as the black bleeds out.

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