Look Closer

All right...certainly not my best work ever, but I wrote it while sitting outside the bookstore at my college, looking down at a planter filled with rocks and knowing I had to present a poem in a few hours for my spoken word class. Enjoy the inner workings of my mind when I just let it wander.


Look Closer

Shades of brown and grey
Look Closer
Beige and orange
Sulfurous yellow
Ruby red, slate blue
A cigarette butt
A paper clip
Carelessly tossed
Vibrant purple
Winding it's serpentine way
Deep chocolate
Rusty red pipe
The green
Almost that of mint
Separates itself
But it's already tinged
With the colors around it
Colors at once
Jagged, rough, and sharp
And yet also
Harmonious
Fitting together like a puzzle
Everything in it's place
The perfect position
To show off a sparkle
A sheen beneath the surface
Bare patches
Where there is no life
Look closer
The tinge of green
A penny, flashing dully
The dulled sprinkler head
Molding to it's surroundings
As if it was always meant to be
Movement
Scurrying
In lines perfectly contoured
To the surface
Paths well-trodden
By millions of legs
Searching desperately
Scrambling for life
Something to quell the hunger
Of billions
Climbing
Dizzying heights
Following well-worn roads
Up, up, and up
To where the green
Saturates the air
Cools the body
Calms the mind
The paths are less worn
Becoming smooth
And perilous
Look closer
The green is being invaded
A dry, crackling yellow
A dead brown
Clustered, or on their own
Dangle like victims of the noose
Of summer's last choking gasps
At the hands of the coming autumn
The pure blue
Passing through the green
Mocks it's death
For autumn has not yet
Locked her hands around it's throat
So the sky shines on, oblivious
Look closer