BLUE MONDAY

You for whom Monday dawns bluely

Not blue of gentian, of cirrus-combed skies,

Not cornflower, powder, periwinkle,

But bottomless blue bruise of ice,

Of frozen feather in a fox’s footprint:

I will stitch you a cloak of comfort in Arnolfini greens,

Swaddle your sadness in robes of amethyst,

Wrap your sorrow in sun-warmed apricots and ambers,

Dry your tears with tissues of cadmium and canary,

Warm your heart with carnelian and coquelicot reds.

I would not see you blue

But if that is where you must be for now,

I will walk out across

This fragile crust of slippy-sided blueness

To hold your hand

Under the frozen brow

To wait with you

For rainbows.

Synaesthesia

How can I mirror your vague-eyed Pre-Raphaelite smile?

Weaving the warp and weft backward and forward

Weaving the weft and warp forward and backward

Staining with startling dyes

All the diaphanous winter is melting

Back from the bones of the Japanese cherry

Now the narcissus is whispering and cringing,

Crystal and chiffon and vicious like Springtime

Moon of the meadows, forgetting the hunter

Lifts on suburbia, lemon and cadmium pale

Starfish and samphire all cambered and charming,

Dashed with the drumming and dripping of summery spray

And the seasons are whirling

And the colours are wheeling

I am the cog in your clockwork and cycle

Risky phlogiston is setting the marshes on fire

*This is actually the lyric to a song I wrote some years ago. Intermittently I still return to it. The music keeps changing slightly but the words always seem to say a fraction of what I want to say about my synaesthesia, the way my senses blend sights and sounds and tastes together. So I've said it. Thanks!