Fred goes shopping and is dazzled by the return of color for spring

Sunglasses off and on again,
No more will I look like a little brown wren
For color is back 
And neon's the new black!
I just have to learn how to refer
To the various components of this incandescent blur:

Blue is green and green is yellow,
Gray is bright, chartreuse is mellow,
Dusty Rose is shocking pink,
Rosy Taupe - light brown, you'd think -
But no, look at my mismatched clothes,
Rosy Taupe is Dusty Rose!
Mossy Taupe is Burnt Sienna,
Desert Earth was Weathered Henna,
But now it's closer to Army Green
Or Vintage Bronze or Baby Breen,
Which is what the army wears when it goes out to dance 
In camofleur chiffon and military pixie pants.

A cheerful gray, a merry puce,
A winemaker's nightmare of Burgundy Fog,
Come, lift a glass to Faded Sky,
Heather Slate, Yellow Clay and eight shades of salmon.
Another glass, another glass, these shades are jammin'
Tomorrow I'll have to grab an outfit on the fly,
Try as I may, I can't deduce
What I'm wearing without a shot of the hair of the dog.
With regret, the verse stops here,
Not that more colors couldn't appear,
But nothing rhymes with orange.

Footnote: see also this post.

21 comments:

  1. That's so funny - you little clever-clogs!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Autocorrect strikes again, I meant Crisis!

    ReplyDelete
  3. LOVE THIS! I always feel the same about the colour "rebranding"! Your last verse makes me think of the old knock-knock joke:

    knock-knock?
    who's there?
    Orange!
    Orange who?
    Orange you glad I couldn't think of a rhyme for orange?

    You are brilliant!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Southern Belle Ph.D.January 29, 2012 at 1:48 PM

    I agree. Brilliant indeed! I so love your poetry. As you know, orange is the color for Spring. Not for me though.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A rhyming rainbow - what a treat!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks, Southern Belle! No orange here!

    ReplyDelete
  7. You nailed it Fred. Thanks for the laugh!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Excellent poem Fred! You should write children's books, they could be so fun.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This is the adult version of "Hailstones and Halibut Bones". Do you think we will really wear these colors????

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hi, Lane, halibut bones? Is that the color of a lace-up seagoing hoodie?

    Actually all the color and garment names came from real catalogs. I'm still offended by "military pixie pants."

    ReplyDelete

As Alice Roosevelt Longworth said, if you've got anything bad to say, sit next to me! No, really, please remember to be kind, and don't say anything fred's mother would not approve of (Diner's mom didn't approve of anything. Including fred.)
Wellfedfred and the Whining Diner reserve the right to edit or delete any comments submitted to this blog without notice if we find:
1. Comments deemed to be spam or questionable spam
2. Comments including profanity or objectionable language
3. Comments containing concepts that could be deemed offensive
4. Comments that attack a person individually
and since there's been a flood of spam lately, we're trying the Robot thing to see if we can block some spam...