HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some writers and artists who’d sent in work the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, now that The Green Issue print magazine has been released! (For more information or to purchase your copy, visit our shop.)

 

Rick Blum
Emperor of Idioms

 

Envy, how like a carnivorous tide you erode contentment,
unashamedly dragging the color green
(an otherwise pleasant hue) into your toxic patois.

Oh, the injustice: green – a symbol of hope;
a crocus shoot’s promise to weary sufferers of winter’s pall
that monotonal landscapes are not a permanent condition –
thus defamed by unpredicted proximity.

Were I emperor of idioms, I’d decree that purple or azure
share its spectral bed with envy’s sordid soul.
But rage has already staked a claim on purple,
and, despite the fact that azure with envy
rolls off the tongue as smoothly as a Kenny G solo,
evoking crystal skies makes azure an idiomatic misfit.

But my cardinal act would be to extract green
from envy’s evil grip – freeing it to socialize
with more charming companions, like horns and gills
and garden-friendly thumbs – enabling blue-blood poets
to praise its viridian attributes in rose-colored odes
flush with purple prose.

 


Rick Blum has been chronicling life’s vagaries through essays and poetry for more than 30 years during stints as a nightclub owner, high-tech manager, market research mogul, and, most recently, old geezer. His writings have appeared in The Literary Hatchet, WINK magazine, and Boston Literary Magazine, among others. He is also a frequent contributor to the Humor Times, and has been published in numerous poetry anthologies.

This poem was first published in The Literary Hatchet, May 2017.