The Colors

The Colors

Don’t take away the colors
because some of them aren’t so pretty.
We live our lives for the colors.
We are the colors, both beautiful and bad.

Bohemia is all the colors,
we breathe for the sake of the colors.
Ghetto is just black and white
without the colors it’s just the absence of life.

We are the hippy, the rave,
those Technicolor spinning lights
that turn you upside down and inside out
and leave you in wonderment of the life.

Our lives revolve around the colors
the beautiful make it worth the bad
and living without these colors…
is like walking, while still dead.

Alice, this is an amazing piece and so vibrant how you describe our lives by colour, by a collage of shades. I think I can safely say this is by far one of your best pieces. It's simple yet complex, it's a prism it appears to be something easily understood but shine some light on it. New facets appear. I really can't convey in words how amazing this is.

This by far is my favourite stanza:

We are the hippy, the rave,
those Technicolor spinning lights
that turn you upside down and inside out
and leave you in wonderment of the life.

Lovely imagery and great message. Keep it up Alice you really are skilled with poetry. It's obvious from this piece alone.

EPIC! I love it. The rhythm was good, it sounded like you were reading it to me as I was drifting off to sleep. A nursery rhyme, only without the rhyme... you know, where it has that sense of mystery, like a riddle... I don't know how to describe it! All I know is that it was good!

You have a couple of words that are repetitive. You use "life" and "colors" a lot.

My favorite stanzas:

Alice wrote:We are the hippy, the rave,
those Technicolor spinning lights
that turn you upside down and inside out
and leave you in wonderment of the life.

Our lives revolve around the colors
the beautiful make it worth the bad
and living without these colors…no elipses! those are hard to make do with in poetry. A comma will do, or whatever you call this thingie --
is like walking, while still dead.

Beautiful poem. Its very nice and i find it is written some what well.
Just one thing, though , i find its kind of hard to read. It could just be me but maybe it could use some editing so that its more "flowy". It's a great idea, just needs some editing so that people won't have to read a stanza over and over again until it sounds correct, which is what i found myself doing ..... Over all though .. good job.!
- imaginemymind

Wow Alice, this is really nice. I especially like the line "Ghetto is just black and white" cause its true. We all obsess over the color of our skin. To be one as a world we must look past the bad colors and see them all as beautiful. keep on writing. ~Emaly

Lol, that wasn't really the whole point, but I suppose it could be.

It was very thought-provoking, but the overuse of the word colors lessened my enjoyment somewhat.

Anyway, nice poem.

Evil

Hi Alice! Here as requested. =]


Your opening two lines aren't my favourite. Trying to put my finger on why, the best I could come up with is that they sounded... childish? I'm not sure if that's it, but something about the phrasing sounded awkward too. Sorry I can't be more specific than that.

Okay, then reading on, to the next two lines, I'm getting that same feeling, but that they're cliche. I'm getting the statement that "we" live our lives for the colours, and are the colours, beautiful and bad... but it doesn't make me feel anything. Instead I get the sense I've heard all this before about a million other things.

I kinda agree that you said "the colours" a couple times too often. In some places you could just take out "the" and it would give it a little different feel, and it would flow better as well.

Since this is all about colours, I was surprised that you never described them at all. You mention black and white, but you only generally touch on the others. "Colour" is an all-inclusive word, but it doesn't really generate any images.
The line "Technicolour spinning lights", that put a picture in my head. Maybe if you used more words like that, that are more suggestive, like rainbow, or spectrum, or something more uncommon that makes us notice it. Ironically, color can be kind of a bland word because it's such a common one.

I definitely liked the second two stanzas better than the first. They were descriptive, and gave off an energy. They flowed better than the first two also. I think that was because you didn't have so many separate phrases. In the first stanza, I made a definite cut-off after every single line which made it a little choppy. And in the second, the cut-off after the first line was even more definite than the ones in the first stanza. In the last two, you have one continuous thought in each, and that was easier to read.

"Our lives revolve around the colours" is a definite tell, not show when it should be the other way around, show don't tell.

I agree with Ican that you don't need the ellipses. I think it's dramatic enough without.

There are two things I didn't understand. First of all why you mention Bohemia? I might be missing something obvious there. But while Ghetto seems like a more general reference to a type of place, Bohemia is more specific? Not sure what you were getting at.
The other is this line: "We are the hippy, the rave". I thought that you were talking about the colours, in this stanza, especially when you say "and leave you in wonderment of the life." That definitely sounded like something that would be true of the colours, instead of the speakers. Unless you meant this stanza to be from the point of view of colour? In which case, you probably need some distinction, because I had no way of knowing.

Overall, whatever the colours were supposed to be went over my head. This mostly went: the colours make our life worthwhile, don't take they away, even though some are bad. I couldn't get any deeper into it than that. I couldn't tell what the emotion was, were they desperate, were they happy, were they pleading, were they thankful. And I'd love to see more description of the colours, or anything really. You have a lot of point blank statements which told, instead of showed. I'd really like to get at whatever you real idea for this is, because I know that it's in there somewhere, and your Bohemia, and Ghetto, and contrast with black and white are intriguing to a point, but I couldn't get there.

Just a couple last grammatical/structural things:
"without the colors it’s just the absence of life." You have pronoun without an antecedent here. What's "it"? Without the colours there is an absence of life?

"and leave you in wonderment of the life." - "the life"? Or life in general?

"Our lives revolve around the colors
the beautiful make it worth the bad" There should be a period at the end of the first line here, or maybe a colon or a hyphen. It does need something.

If you ever want me to take another look at this, let me know. =]

i fell in love with this. very beautiful and touching. i loved how you portrayed how the bad and good colors kinda balance each other out. how each one of us are a different color. simply amazing- is an understatement for this beautiful writing piece. dont stop writing- you certainly have talent.
my fav. stanza:

We are the hippy, the rave,
those Technicolor spinning lights
that turn you upside down and inside out
and leave you in wonderment of the life.

wonderful. (:

Hey Alzz! Love the idea behind this but I think you could touch it up in a few places. Here's my general thoughts on flow and such:

The Colors [In all honesty if Vernon hadn't pointed this out to me, I'd have passed it by despite knowing you because I'm a sucker for good titles. This title does very little for your piece. It should be something abstract that still links to the poem but provides a lens through which your poem can be read. A good title should be the key to any deeper meaning that's in the poem or at least a clue.]

Don’t take away the colors
because some of them aren’t so pretty. [I think the lexicon of this makes the two lines awkward. I had to read them a second time to work out if you was saying the colours shouldn't be taken away just because some aren't pretty or (and this was my first impression) don't take away the colours because they're not pretty and it seemed to imply that was a good thing? Basically, I think you need to start this the other way with a mention of how the colours aren't so pretty and then asking for them to not be taken away and defending them. I'd also like some more imagination! How are they not pretty, which aren't pretty? Extend this, give us something to visualise! Like:

'Grey is drab and the mustard shade
is only good for shirt-sleeve stains...'

[Yeah so maybe your persona is an artist? Because a fun persona makes for an awesome poet ^^]

We live our lives for the colors.
We are the colors, both beautiful and bad. [So I like what you're saying but it's very base and it doesn't make a strong impact. You need to explain how we're the colours, you need to make your reader really feel that conenction.]

Bohemia is all the colors,
we breathe for the sake of the colors.
Ghetto is just black and white
without the colors it’s just the absence of life. [Love the last line, not sure about any of the others. I'd like to see more like the last and a stronger expression of that.]

We are the hippy, the rave,
those Technicolor spinning lights
that turn you upside down and inside out
and leave you in wonderment of the life. [Again there's only a line here that really made me feel anything and that was the second. I think you need to choose your words more carefully so that the flow is smooth and your images are stronger. Poetry is all about playing with a person's thoughts and feelings and pulling them back and forth; you need to make the reader experience something.]

Our lives revolve around the colors
the beautiful make it worth the bad
and living without these colors…
is like walking, while still dead. [color=red][Mmmm. The analogy doesn't work for me. I think you could find one that has a better connection? Walking while still dead? What are you trying to expree there? The impossibility? If you can explain what brought this image/ thought to your head, put that into the poem because it seems like a random leap to me. And why still dead? Is anyone still dead, it suggests their natural state is one of death but they can come alive? Odd choice of words my dear ^^

Thanks for the read hun! Over and out,

Heather <3333