(a vision or fragments of a dream)
a colour of a lesser bloom
a falling back from that spectrum
which first lit the trees of Eden.
too much black
and the green and blue together,
a colour my toddler might make
when, in vengeful mode,
he wipes the smiling sun
into the wavy sea
and drowns the black boat
crew & every parenthetical seagull
in a grey wash of watercolours.
call it Xanadu because it’s here
in the philodendron jungle
by the sacred river
that the mighty Khan
declared his fun park
with concession stands
delivery docks and back alleys
redolent with frying fish
the stink of hashish,
boiled cabbage and disinfectant.
and here at the back door
of the Pan Pacific Park night club
around 5 am
find the duchesses and the debauchees
stepping out into the green,
blinking, leaning together.
the sidewalk aslant
they go rolling
down xanadu streets
(O perfect colour)
to their turquoise rooms
once again.
← This is xanadu, the colour not the place – and for the Weekend Challenge, Sue W has asked for a creative response to the colour with the wonderful name. Also posted at the Open Link Night at Dverse, the poets’ pub where Lillian is hosting from splendid isolation in Boston.
And here’s Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s original fever dream Kubla Khan.
Peter Frankis writes 
That is the last color I would expect to be called Xanadu! It should be purple or gold or silver at the very least!!
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Def. 😀
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Thank you for sharing your poem with us and for taking part in our challenge 🙂
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Great prompt Sue – and lots of fun. Thank you.
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You are so welcome and thank you for saying. 😊
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I had to re-read ‘Kubla Khan’ after reading this – and am so awed by your words I momentarily wondered if you had partaken of Coleridge’s libation – the imagery of the second stanza! and the final one with ‘duchesses and debauchees’ – I see them rolling along the pavement painted ‘xanadu’
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Thanks Laura, glad you liked – Coleridge’s poem is a hoot – unfortunately they’re not selling his libation at my local supermarket (yet).
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nor presumably did the man from Porlock call 😉
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I like the description of the color as one made by a child as “he wipes the smiling sun
into the wavy sea
and drowns the black boat”.
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I like the colour, but I would have thought Xanadu would be sand yellow or umber. I love the image in these lines, Peter:
‘a colour my toddler might make
when, in vengeful mode,
he wipes the smiling sun
into the wavy sea
and drowns the black boat
crew & every parenthetical seagull
in a grey wash of watercolours’
and the appeal to my sense of smell in these:
‘…concession stands
delivery docks and back alleys
redolent with frying fish
the stink of hashish,
boiled cabbage and disinfectant’.
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Excellent. I especially liked this stanza:
“too much black
and the green and blue together,
a colour my toddler might make
when, in vengeful mode,
he wipes the smiling sun
into the wavy sea
and drowns the black boat
crew & every parenthetical seagull
in a grey wash of watercolours.”
It’s so true right….we muddy up the colors…too much water, too much dipping, too much one on top of the other. This in and of itself is a wonderful metaphor…
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Thanks Lillian – so glad you enjoyed (it was a fun write)…
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That description of the color is so interesting, I remember the mixing of watercolors often just ending in another shade of brown… alas… but when it’s your toddler it’s still beautiful.
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Oh yeah…
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