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0011 Synaesthesia..

Sounds nasty, maybe
life-threatening:
‘I’m sorry, boys,
Michael can’t come out today
and play – he’s suffering from
synaesthesia..’

Oho, no – synaesthesia
is Poet Central: it’s the description
of what one sense perceives
in terms of another.. like when
Emily Dickinson,
she of the golden pen –
writes ‘To the bugle,
every color is red’…

So here we have the soldiers
Changing the Guard
at Buckingham Palace
(Christopher Robin
went down with Alice…) :
the scarlet tunics are loud as trumpets,
the bugles are painting the town scarlet red;
and watching them are Gertrude Stein,
e e cummings, and Emily herself…

In the Odyssey (we’re talking
top-drawer Lit, you’ll note)
the Sirens sang with honeyed voices:
‘Pooh Bear was just going out of the door
when he heard a whisper like a bee
busy in a flower; then a louder sound
like a happy bee taking a rest on Pooh’s ear
on the way from one flower to another..
then he realised – it was the hunny jar
at the end of the line of hunny jars,
asking to be noticed...
Pooh sighed an obedient sigh,
took off his scarf, took a spoon
from the drawer, and the smiling hunny jar
from the shelf…’
This was the song the Sirens sang…

And there’s one whole song about it:
You’re the tops!
you’re the Tower of Pisa;
you’re the smile
on the Mona Lisa…

you’re the metaphor
that’s better for
the thought;
you’re all the senses
that God dispenses,
all making sport…

so, I’m sorry,
Michael regrets, he's unable to play today –

he’s at his computer,
velvet blues on the CD,
tasting words with his fingertips,
poems glinting on the horizon of his ear,
dancing in the stillness of the mind.

poem by Michael Shepherd
Added by Poetry Lover
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