August 13
HOW RED IS RED
I check my color and contrast; I paint the setting sun. Add a bit of yellow and fill to the edge
burgeoning poppies. Add more blue and
paint the blood which pools around my mind, the equalizer of all my mental
conversations. Too much is never enough. As
the story goes, I pursue my shades and signatures. Too
much for the fingers and not enough
for the toes, I disregard fraudulent crimson. I scale the mountains of
intention looking for perfection. The
leach of my addiction drains the other colors from my rainbow. My sponsor asks only one question.
“How red is red?”
Allow your
thoughts to be neighborly with your feelings.
*
Phillips Head
What’s stuck in makes the thing.
What sticks out is all that’s seen.
I can tell so much from what is left out,
yet there is much I will never know, can never tell.
The twist, the give, the opening to variation
is known, but never acknowledged.
Somehow indecent if spoken
or thought of too loudly, insinuation is ignored
Society allows us to focus on
what is held after or due to this act.
We have built the whole world
on what we can screw together.
But we will merely hallow this,
never embrace the fact until it falls apart.
Then we exclaim over the rawness
of how it caused us to be turned around,
The risk and wrongness,
ignoring just how much good
can come from just a simple screw.
You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane
and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault
