What is Black & White and Not Read

Dear Poet,
Thank you for your diligent inquiries.
While we appreciate your work, it is not right for us.
In addition, we encourage you to continue to try to fit in-
stead fast, stand under a lone wolf moon at the howling,
or some-such-thing.
Please note-our open minded period is very, well, narrow.
Also, know that you will not be known,
yourself unfit for traditional shapes, bodies of work
form @s.
I almost forgot, Notoriety. Silly me.
You must agree, you will be not known to anybody,
you are generic,
in the white flimsy boxes with the black sans serif
font-ain't it close enough
to alternative nutritional facts?
Anyway, we hope that you are more than satisfied with this
onerous offer.
Please do not let us know later than possible.
(there can be no changes or credit).
Respectful to others,
Them.


Image credit by Marjory Collins, described as-'loading sugar in a grocery department' July 1942) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dreams casting shadows

One needn't try to demystify
precisely why the shadows lie
the way they do.
There is always an excuse.
Dare not to ask the old salt and pepper nurse
how she came to be the sole caretaker
of crows
and a single cockatoo
every morning, every single mourning,
she knows
they are there for her too.
The brown boy that is now
a milk chocolate man
still slices cold cuts and fresh white bread
at the local sandwich shop and a decade later
still says 'Hi'-
don't ask me why
the police roll by
and I am reminded, it is just a job.
Do you remember that riddle
about what is black and white-
I've read too much...
Speculation bleeds ink.
I think
I will never ask
why my dreams are now in vivid color.



Painting titled Cloud Shadows (1890) by Winslow Homer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Blending in

Greyscale is more than
black and white values, showing
a com-par-i-son.



Image By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Life and letters of John Constable, R. A (1896)

Spring cleaning

It was eighty degrees in April,
calamities abounding on fractured plates,
like earthquakes
and the old lady
wearing a black tank top, her arms propped on her knees,
sits on a curb
outside the white medical office
with her frizzy white hair
clenched in her hands...
and she quakes quietly,
her skin ripples in the white noon light.
Mexican fan palms crackling in the white hot breeze
seem to say
just another day in paradise.
The pollen has fallen,
she could smell it in the air
while dripping salt water on the blacktop.




Image of painting by By Carl Heuser (1827-1892) (Bonhams) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.