How quickly things change with you, scarlet, by my side

One minute I was liberating you and now there are spears down your throats all full of

ruby.

Red, red, I see red flashing in my eyes

I swear I’m going blind,

Was that a cannon I fired towards your village or was it a love letter?

Jamie Lynn,

Oh, can you feel vermilion in the gun strapped to your daddy’s back

When he goes out to kill the innocent suspected civilians

Can you see amaranth, Jamie Lynn, in his ashes?

And I cry for you, Jamie Lynn, and my tears never turn crimson.

even if your eyes, half-shut but full of vengeance, gleam surukh for me.

(me and my country).

This is red.

These are your idols.

Can you see them, scattered on the floor at the end with hands intertwined in others’ who

were also,

taken away from their loving everything because of the reckless ruthless passion puce caused in some

puffed up big man’s eyes.

Maybe you loved in pink and hues

of beautiful summertime blues, and you survived, your sweet

fairytale peacetime ending.

Yet maybe there was a drumming, thrumming, in your head

and you loved in red, you loved in scarlet-violet, you

laal-loved and ruined it all. Broke apart, big explosion

boom

because

You can’t water flowers with sisters of blood, and brothers of rage, and the father of vengeance and the mother of murder no you can’t

love me with the cousin of hate.

Do you understand, Jamie Lynn,

What the stripes in the air and the carefree feathers in your hair

Mean when they’re red and what

It does to the world when your eyes become accustomed to that peculiar persimmon hue

do you?

The color of candy

apple red would you like to eat me

alive with your saber-tooth tiger’s teeth?

And you know all is sanguine, my sangria spilling

The folly and the flame,

you have both colors attached to your name, are you proud

of that suspicious sinopia scarlet?

Burnt sienna flies in the air, makes a home in your head

I know, I can feel it, can hear it pounding in your heart when you take the flame and burn down my town.

This is red.

Maybe this poem is badly timed

By a day, or two, or one.

But everyone bleeds red just the same.

And God hardly cares what in what language they cry out your name,

oh Jamie Lynn.