Poetry

The Primary Colours

When paints are mixed,

those cheap, crumbling,

ten-year-old poster paints

which we fought over

with chubby hands and innocent claims,

when they are mixed

they always make

brown.

Not a deep, rich mahogany

or even a delicate hazel

but an ugly, uncertain colour

of shifting hue, congealing quickly

against cheap plastic moulds

which are not capable of

extracting better

from the potential of that paint.

And then the distant orders of the heavy brass bell

free us from thought,

another evening to be spent on

colourful talking images

which can shape but not enlighten

the British population

of smokers and binge drinkers

before we return

To that half finished

finger painting,

the brown pool of anonymity.

The common school

of human thought

these are the primary colours,

all combined to make that crumbling, unsatisfying

brown.

Lindsey Coombs

© 2014