It’s not red
It’s orange
and violet and gold
And silent and sweet
It’s unstoppable and grief and green and hard
It’s a mouthful of cotton-wool
and a glassful of fire
and an unwritten dirge of life
In the months with 30 days, it’s a social media challenge
Out near the supermarket
it’s an unmasked dog with an unwagging tail
Jumping from tree to tree
it’s the coucal that’s unphotographable because my camera is always my phone
It’s rain in the summer
floods in the winter
It’s traveling the world without
leaving my chair
leaving work undone
It’s dying passions and
living the minutiae as if they were passions
It’s eating lies for dessert
after skipping the main meal
It’s crying and laughing and crying and laughing
and feeling the same nothings
It’s swapping love for hate and hate for love
and not knowing and not caring
It’s throwing stones at stones and staying in a bubble
It’s pretending to pretend and being real without admitting it
It’s not stopping and not starting and not floating
It’s being dead and being grateful for being alive and killing for sport
It’s all of this and none of this
and sinking into an abyss and rising above the skies
and choking in the stratosphere
Okay that’s it.
The artwork that appears on top of the poem is available to purchase as an NFT