A Brief History of The Colors in My Life

At first there was the blackness,

The silence,

The nothing.

Then in 1994 my mother bore the burden of giving birth to this earthling.

Kicking, screaming.

Angels and demons,

Unsheathing meanings to keep this boy breathing.

Life was new, life was beautiful.

A kaleidoscope of hopes and dreams.

The crystal clear river of time,

Where tributaries desaturate downstream.

I remember trips to the zoo, and painting planes with my daddy,

A military man with the attachment of a family.

We were moving here,

We were moving there,

2 years here,

3 years there.

In the year 2000,

I moved to Madrid.

As a 6 year old kid, it felt like I'd lived,

A thousand lives, that all intertwined.

Rinse and repeat,

Change the song,

Friends were there,

and then they were gone.

An English boy in an American school.

I said I was from Bushey…

I was considered a fool.

So the Americans bullied me for being a little British,

Funny,

How the red white and blue of our two flags can feel so different.

I took it to heart

and let the luminance of life decrease exponentially,

until the world felt dark.

Anger sparked.

I realized that no one wants to start a fight,

With the little British boy that’d fight all night,

I Learnt to throw a left,

I Learnt to throw a right.

Red in my mind, I started fighting,

I’d always get suspended and got forced to start writing

Apology letters.

Daddy’d pick me up, and he’d take me to his office.

I’d sit with him there and there we’d both work,

Him doing business,

And me apologizing to the people that I’d hurt,

Red letter,

Pink letter,

Whatever the weather, I was writing letters questioning why I wasn't a better boy.

But what's writing letters going to do to a boy that knew,

That fear, status and rage,

stops a man from feeling blue.

And so I carried on through,

Screaming down the line,

but the line wasn't on.

Red,

Red,

Is the red you present,

love, laughter or anger.

Mine was a red raged nuisance,

A white knuckle ride, but my grip just loosens.

Red was the sky,

Red was the dawn,

Broken hands, scared in the scorn .

I carried these angry hands across lands and years

Eventually,

I stopped throwing punches, and started catching tears

The red

Turned to blue,

Clouds of sadness

Replacing the hate.

Was I destined for imbalance,

is pain a part of fate.

In 2016,

My little sister died,

She’d been battling with demons, twice as bad as mine.

In the midst of it all,

I couldn't help but feeling the feeling of our colors interweaving.

Dark hues infused in confusion.

A sea of deep blues, that move in such a way,

That no matter what you do,

you will always be submerged.

Gasping for air,

Constantly drowning,

Hiding a frown in a crowd while the proud clink of a glass of poison,

Whispers

‘you should be happier in your individualism,

when you and your boys laugh away life with a spice of nihilism’.

Both as free as a bird

and yet still caged in a prison.

Roll.

Another.

And.

Relax.

Well now I’m Doctor green thumb,

Specializing in the art of making the heart feel numb.

Smoke a little this, have a little fun.

Do a little that,

Then do another one.

Heavy is the heart that wears the crown,

Crawl around town drowning frowns that are found at the bottom of a glass,

No one thinks your sad if your the guy that starts the laugh,

Doing drugs, just to feel loved,

Not knowing that loved what was I was

Doing drugs,

Just because…

Toking

Joking,

Hoping I can still feel emotions.

The notion of hoping starts to feel more like I'm choking.

The fuzzy feeling has me reaching for meaning,

Trying to find reasons to carry on breathing,

But the reasons change, just like the seasons.

Nonetheless,

As the seasons change,

So does the hue,

Saturation

And luminance

Of all the colors in your life.

So learn to paint with pain and love,

Because you won't be painting twice.