What can I say? Gray does not breathe and blue
is too smug, green a cheat. Then there’s yellow.
I can live with yellow, whose one virtue
is a warm, gentle buzzing, all mellow
and soft, in my ears whenever we kiss.
One time I got to third base with purple,
that’s not saying much, I know. The princess
of the spectrum, teal, calls me a wastrel-
-nogoodnik-bum. All that is luminous
delights me. All that is so bright it burns
my eyes, pleases. There is a queer blindness
though, when it comes to night hues and nocturnes,
blindness the way the soul is blind at peace
and all my needs to be loved by things cease.