How Red is Red

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.

 

About Sherrie Theriault

Sherrie Theriault, writer and outsider artist lives in northwest New Jersey where she writes villain-free fiction for children and young adults, creates coloring books for all ages, writes daily inspiration books for the recovery community and has other works of collected poetry; also adult fiction. Books available on Amazon.com include the following: Cala Mae The Deep Dark Day In The Congenial Chronicles The Holland’s Adventure Fill Me In Fill Me In, Too Filled In Sober on the Way to Sane More Sober on the Way to Sane Lines from My Life More Lines from My Life On-Liners to Live By My Sponsor Said… Elissa: Queen of Carthage Was Love Lost Order of Protection The Story Precedes the Question Can You See? What the Birdies Told Me about You What the Birdies Told Me about You Coloring book The Enchanting Dog Sherrie’s books are available at Blue Stockings, Manhattan, NY, The Clinton Book Shoppe, Clinton, New Jersey, Giovanni’s Room, Philadelphia, PA, Easy Does It in Long Beach, CA and The Latest Thing in Costa Mesa, Ca. You can find Sherrie’s art work at Hang-Ups Gallery in Allentown, PA or online at: SerendipitousGallery.com Please feel free to contact her there if you have any questions.
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