Red (Not the Taylor Swift Album)

This one actually has a funny story to it. You see, one of my friends (The secondary content manager for my other blog, actually) posted a picture where some person asked for someone to describe the color red without using the word "red". Someone responded with some rather charming purple prose, as follows:

"When you dip her in the middle of the dance floor, it is the color of her dress. When she whispers in your ear, it is the color of her lips. When you make love, it is the trace you want her to leave all over your body. When she places her palm over your heart, it is the color that comes to the surface as her fingertips trail like a sentence that can never be finished. When you see her in your bedroom with another, it is the color of your breath. When you smash the vase in the hall, it is the color that threatens you to abandon the shattered pieces. When you scream at the top of your lungs, it is the color that pierces the atmosphere. When she hears you, it is the color of her pulse. When you look in her eyes for the last time, it is the fading color of your heart falling to your knees. It is not the color you see when she leaves."

It was posted by a chap by going by the screen name of "book-halfunread", and I admit that it's quite a beautiful piece of prose. Naturally, I responded to my friend's share of the picture with "625-750 nm electromagnetic radiation. Owned". Afterwards, she had the audacity to say that I, a genuine poet, was not as amazing with words! Needless to say, I was seeing red. In my anger, I whipped up a poem of my own about the color red. I cannot say for sure that it outshines book-halfunread, but I believe it to be perhaps some of my finer work.

Anyway, without further ado:

The color of a fiercely beating heart

The hue you grew when you first heard “I do”

The fire that rages, deep within my art.

It can combat its calmer brother, blue.

It is the color that provides us life

and yet it's that which signifies our death.

A cross that seeks to stop sickness and strife

A wounded warrior's gasped final breath

The budding tenderness of Valentines

The crimson radiance of setting suns

The flaming hope which in the darkness shines

The color of one's nipples when one runs.

And yet, all of the many things I've said

can be conveyed with just the color red.

If you're confused about that bit about nipples, here's an explanation.