Poetry Friday: The Word is COLOR/COLOUR

I was reading some article or another yesterday morning and stumbled across the word ‘color’. It was used in the phrase “person of color”, and I thought briefly about writing a blog post about the colors of mankind, but couldn’t wrap my head around what to say. Instead, it sounded like the perfect Poetry Friday word.

But then…this morning…I was blog-surfing and realized that on Wednesday, Jeremiah had posted about colors. Did that plant the seed of Poetry Friday in my noggin, too?

Perhaps.

Thanks, Jeremiah! Great minds…!

Feel free to use the word ‘color’…or ‘colour’…in your blog post today, in whatever lovely tinted hue you choose…story, poem, photo, remembrance, scientific study of paint colour and general aggression….

My Poetry Friday offering today is a list…as the coffee isn’t sparking any bits of poetic flair, and I really must get some work done this morning.

Oh, BTW, my wonderful husband, Sergei, is posting again! It feels like my phantom limb has grown back…welcome back, honey!

Have a good weekend, y’all!


Mona’s Coat of Many Colours

1) I have yellow skin. Years ago, after comparing forearms with other Wasp-y co-workers, we decided we either had pink skin or yellow skin. Those with pink skin burned in the sun. Those with yellow skin tanned. But because I spend my days locked in a cubicle, the only tan I get is from fluorescent lights, and that’s not really a tan so much as a state of mind.

2) Blue is my favourite colour. When I was a youngster, it was pink.

3) The best thing I took away from high school science classes was the knowledge of the colour spectrum. The very specific order of it. ROY G. BIV. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.) Now I criticize cartoon rainbows when they transpose colours.

4) The best thing I took away from college science classes was the study of fruit flies, and how eye colour was passed down genetically. Even though my dad’s eyes are brown, he didn’t stand a chance of passing that trait down in the mostly-blue-eyed relatives we stem from.

5) The house we grew up in had lime green and pepto-bismol-pink walls. Until we painted over them. Now I wish we hadn’t.

6) This man's use of colour is amazing. So is his.

7) I remember very specifically being taught to colour inside the lines. Like a good girl, I obeyed. Maybe that’s why I find it difficult to colour outside my own life lines these days.

8) There were very few people of colour in the town I grew up in. When I came to Local University, I reveled in the diversity. I’d walk through campus listening to the accents and foreign tongues, the patois and the patter. Watching the faces, the walks. A friend visited Lebanon, his home, and came back with amazing stories, giving me currency from his homeland and writing his name, David, on it so I'd never forget him. I'm sitting here remembering folks I haven't thought of in years, and how their lives intertwined with mine.

9) When I was little, I discovered that if I closed my eyes really tight and rubbed them really hard, my eyes could see a dark-green background with 5- or 6-sided figures crowded into the space…like Buckyballs…all sparkly and pulsing. Did anyone else do that?

10) Sometimes I'll stare up at the sky, in the early morning or at twilight, and marvel at how intense the colours are. If I were to paint those colours, they'd look fake. Sometimes I'll see a blue sky with white clouds, and smile at how much they look like the opening of "The Simpsons".