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Crayola Conspiracy
We were children and they gave us markers
For filling up the empty space with color.
Armed with Crayola's brilliant sixty-four,
We mastered rainbows, then learned even more
Of strange natural hues that were somewhat duller
Than we'd expected, somehow darker
Than our open cartoon eyes were used to.
Mr. Crayola, it seems, had a notion
To crayon every color he could muster,
And, going to the tubes of the Old Masters,
Found pigments fit for hayfields, nudes and oceans.
But how, he thought, are six-year-olds supposed to
Know where to put such bittersweet eye flavors?
Mommy, what's burnt umber, sienna, ocher,
Teal, viridian, indigo, fuchsia?
What the heck is cobalt? Where is Prussia?
So then, Mr. Crayola, being the sly old joker
That he was, he did us all a favor
By selling us simpler titles to the same
Old palette-smears of the same Old Masters.
And so we grew up believing in midnight blue,
Sea green and indian red, unless we knew
The colors of the world are changing faster
Than we can follow, and some of them have no names.
Cerulean Blues
I wanted a guitar. Still, my new watercolors
rock in their succinct watercolor box,
a good two dozen Winsor-Newton tubes,
pregnant with pigment. The clever bamboo screen
unrolls to reveal an exclusive clique
of various well-groomed brushes,
a wide wash, rounds and flats and a fan.
All this and a John Pike palette, white as a light bulb.
What then should I render immortal?
A damp curvaceous landscape, a still-life
of swollen fruit or copious folds of cloth
won't do me. I'm too full of blue notes,
bent pitches, the jangle of bottle-neck.
Then an idea strikes me. As soon as I kick
this mound of wrapping paper off my feet,
I'm painting myself a portrait of Stagger Lee.
The very first blob of alizarin crimson
sings to the ultramarine
Come on over here, baby. You and me
together are the blood of Billy de Lion
on the bottom of Stagger Lee's shoes.
Raw umber, new gamboge,
a quick lick of Hooker's green
will fall in curvature to compose
the rain-soaked Stetson Stagger Lee would kill for.
His sienna skin will glisten in cadmium lemon
bourbon streetlight still listening for explosions.
Dry paper will never be blank as his eyes.
They'll be china white.
What kind of painting is wet as the blues?
Watercolor is wet as the blues,
wet as the blood on the bottom of Stagger Lee's shoes.
Cover the stain. Paint over the stain.
It resurrects and bleeds to the top again.
In watercolor the hand must keep moving.
Whatever's put down stays part of the painting.
Stagger Lee, he's a watercolor man.
Liquor, rain, spit. Liquor, rain, spit.
The palm of his knuckly hand is always wet
against the butt of the cobalt violet gun.
Geranium
No more red! the Great Painters of the Empire cried.
Henceforth, we will paint the world with no red in it.
Blame the art of war. Blame the samurais.
They've stained the stones and grasses with that color.
The word went out. It became the popular ceremony
To wipe red from the palette and burn the rag.
Some of the Lesser Painters dissented at first
And went on painting sunsets, nipples and such.
But they soon found their paintings wouldn't sell
Except to samurais. The Painters' Guild expelled them.
Their extant works were defaced and their families shamed.
When a vermillion importer's storeroom burned mysteriously,
The pigment market panicked. Purples cooled to blue.
Oranges paled to yellow. Years bleached by
As even the names became taboo and prostitutes took them:
Carmine, Scarlet, Crimson, Cerise, Rose Madder.
But little else changed. Samurais drank dark wine.
Turtles stared as herons stood for hours
On one bright leg. Chickens hatched with combs.
Coals glowed in ovens. Mares foaled. Tigers yawned.
The Palace Carp fanned their gills under drifting carpets
Of autumn leaves, and some nights even the moon
Bulged like a glass Buddha's cheek, full of cherry juice.
But one day an angry student refused to paint
Another warm gray geranium. He sharpened his knife....
Bit his lip, looked away and slid the blade
Down the pad of his thumb, deeper than he'd meant.
Geranium! he cried. Before he fainted,
Round red blossoms splashed across the silk.
A graduate of the MFA program at Warren Wilson College, Browning Porter lives and writes in Charlottesville, VA where he is the lead singer for the Treefrogs. His work has appeared widely; an earlier version of Crayola Conspiracy appeared in the Virginia Literary Review, and Geranium appeared originally in New England Review.