Green Looks Like Grey When You Are Colour Blind

[motion]

I love the smell of bounty-fresh grey in the morning,
In fact almost all of my clothes are grey:
t-shirts, sweatshirts, golf shirts, dress shirts.

My wife says, You need to add some color to your wardrobe,
To which I reply, that's what all my beige pants are for, besides
The world is grey isn't it?

There is a grey god with a grey beard,
grey hat and grey shoes made in a grey
sweatshop

attached to the green thumb of Thales,
which looks grey if you're colour blind.

If you mix black ink with white paper
you get grey,

you get politics, morals
and Socrates

you get a new label for an old container
grey as brain matter

Please be critical

[Virgil]

As someone whose wife has also said the same, "you need to get color in your wardrobe" I can sympathize with the feeling. The problem I had with the poem was that it seemed the poem couldn't make up it's mind whether to be satiric or not. And that's not bad in itself except that satire requires a certain clarity of statement, and I'm not sure I understand what the statement is. Perhaps it just went over my head. Let's see what others think.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Talk about coincidence. I just posted a 50 words or less story with a similar theme. I like this, I'm not quite sure how much yet, but I definitely like it.

Did Thales have a green thumb? I don't quite understand the reference here. As I understand it, Thales was one of the pre-Socratic, 'natural' philosophers and held that water was the overarching origin of all things. He was one of the first (perhaps the first) of the Greek philosophers to proffer a purely naturalistic view of the world and its events, ie. one not explained by recourse to the gods. Thales is also the name of a French, multinational electronics and armaments company. Either way, I still don't understand the green thumb.

[white camellia]

Thales was one of the pre-Socratic, 'natural' philosophers and held that water was the overarching origin of all things.

Either way, I still don't understand the green thumb.

Xam, Thales' philosophy has nothing to do with green thumb which is also related to Nature?

[Xamonas Chegwe]

The phrase 'natural philosopher' refers to the naturalistic approach of these men - they speculated on the workings of nature, closer to what we refer to these days as physics than to botany or horticulture. You can read about him HERE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales).

[motion]

my clothes heave
bounty-fresh grey:

t-shirts, sweatshirts,
golf shirts, dress shirts.

but beige pants
annex colour

to Thales'
grey-watered world

of grey-bearded
gods,


with black inked
white paper politics,

morals,
Socrates,

new labels
old containers,

grey as brain matter




Thanks to all who have read and replied to this. I did not expect to recieve immediate feedback. I look forward to reading all of your work. I've put up a revision. I'm not sure if I have a focus for this yet and this might just get scrapped altogether, but I'm having fun playing around with it. It's clear as mud, right? I appreciate your interest

motion :D

[Xamonas Chegwe]

I think I prefer the original. The new version is a little too sparse. I think that some of the lines only make sense because I know what they used to be.

[white camellia]

The problem I had with the poem was that it seemed the poem couldn't make up it's mind whether to be satiric or not.

i agree with Virgil, but then the author's purpose might not be that. Nonetheless i feel the author is not pleased with the grey world, though anyone has got used to it.

[amuse]

my clothes heave
bounty-fresh grey:
-----------------
new labels
old containers,

grey as brain matter
i prefer the original but think these two revised parts are an improvement. i don't necessarily like the "my clothes heave bounty-fresh grey" as much as the use of "heave." Maybe you could have two different versions :D? both first stanzas work in their own right, though of course the new one doesn't meter properly with the original.

[breathtest]

I know this is an old poem but i have just read it and it is fantastic. I'm bringing it back...