Blue Crayola

This is the oldest poem that I have saved on my computer. It is a poem from September 2000. There are poems with older roots floating around, but this one has the oldest modification date.

I can't tell you what the original inspiration was, it is lost to me. I think it had to do with that time of year when twilight grows long and the sky takes on that amazing blue glow the last few hours before full dark.

What Joan Didion calls the blue hours. It happens in late May and early September. The start and finish of summer. The sky announcing the growing season with a trumpet blast.

Here is the poem. It's just called Blue Crayola:

4 generations of logos on Prussian (now Midnight) blue

Water wrapped in wood

Dipped in cornflower
And cased in sugar
Crisp as the sky, yet
Blurred as the oceans
Atlantis in a paper cup
Neptune’s pen of pens
The melting point of wax
Becomes indigo crushed
A missile from the Blue Man Group
Chew-toy of the young and famous
And not-so-famous
Implement of famous nights and devastating floods
A place of worship for faeries
One hundred years old
A Tim Burton movie’s inspiration
Blue Crayola,
September 2000

I have two versions saved. One with the blue words, and one without. I like the idea behind the coloring of the words. That some of them clearly connect to 'blue' and some seem as far from it as can be. Like 'wax' and 'worship'. In my head I can invent new connections for the color and the word.

I cannot be sure if they are the same as the ones I had 13 years ago.

The forgetting of thought process is not a problem for me. Not scary. But it is interesting how ephemeral that thought can be. When I wrote this I am sure it seemed to be important. Imperative, even. I bet I turned this in to workshop. I bet people said nice things.

What would I write today if I was meditating on a blue crayon? Which is what this seems to be ultimately. A thought on a childhood object written at the end of childhood. I think it would be similar, touch on subjects like these. Though Neptune and the sea feel more green to me now. And I think Blue Man Group is too obvious, but the missile is good. I don't like the obtuse references to actual blue things. I feel like it relies too heavily on that. I want it to come sideways. From non-blue parts of the universe.

September is definitely blue. I will have to revisit this.

In the meantime go read Thirty-Six Shades of Prussian Blue by Joshua Cohen.