Divas' Intelligentsia

Why are my tears so colourless?
I imagine that tears of joy would be like a rainbow.
Or Joseph's coat of many colours,
their brightness smeared by joy.

Despair would be black.
A paint mixed with too much water
or mascara stains.

What colour for contentment?
Would it be the same as ambivalence?
Perhaps soothing blue,
for the constancy of the sky.

Lying in my hired bed
in a backwards town.
Thinking of
the warmness of your skin.
How your smell stains my sheets.
The sounds you make as I touch you.

Remembering, I cry.
Wondering what colour my pillow will be when I wake.
I've cried so many times over you,
the blackness of my tears surely must diminish.
Their palette distilled.

But they haven't,
their despair is still shocking.
Again, leaving me black and blue.

you can't trust men
you can't trust boys
you can't trust clothes
you can't trust toys
you can't trust cakes
you can't trust bread
you can't trust floor
you can't trust bed
you can't trust words
you can't trust books
you can't trust stares
you can't trust looks
you can't trust heaven
you can't trust earth
you can't trust sadness
you can't trust mirth

you can trust trees
you can trust skies
you can trust ants
you can trust flies
you can trust cold
you can trust heat
you can trust hands
you can trust feet
you can trust days
you can trust hours
you can trust grass
you can trust flowers
you can trust beach
you can trust sea
you can trust ocean
you can trust me

I was like another person
when I wore the blue wig,

It would have scared
Monica's cat.

But at the ball,
it just made me feel
anonymous.

I could do as I pleased.
And I did.

I fell onto the floor. I
got drunk and kissed
boys of all sexes.

We had all gone
in costume, dressed
as our inner selves.

Neighbourhood starlets,
gays, geishas, pimps,
small Asians, divas.

It was the last goodbye
and the first hello.
It was the cat's meow.

I wish that
my colours
could be distilled to just
two shades of pink.
Magenta and rose.
Magenta for the outline
and rose for the in-between.

I have no truck
with the dull hues
of your cheapskate rainbow:
dark coats and white gloves
and feathers of red.

Today I tore down
your photograph
and discarded it.

It was a picture of us
at the top of a
grey lighthouse. You pouted,
as you always did.

If I could have seen you pouting
that day, in the wind, up high
it would have made me sick.

All the little pixels
that made up your face
were dots of ink,
and that ink can never
be got back.