Between Ultragreen and Ultraviolet

I have longed for a blue, pure

And of cerulean proportions, chiefly—mending

As the contour of clouds on the azure

And yet also dark, as ultramarine,

Deep and oceanic—a color

Of late nights and spurious conversation

And the Atlantic, a tone of valor

And of wine, of payments in libations

I am lost in my search for a hue

Substractive, the tint of a photo negative

As a positive—the kind of absolute blue

That one finds tentative

When eyelids have been shut before the sun

And sight is substractive, matterless, anti-lighting

Though as an acrylic, as matter, when all but blue is gone

A mirror’s mirror in a star-lit painting

Somehow evanescent, as though

I wish to write with the background of cyanotype blueprints

The blue that deep water bestows

Onto all fish and all that dares to sink beneath the world’s shallowest imprints

I desire both the blue of Libra the negociator and that of Aries the ultimatum

The tint of the Cambrian, and that of a fallen prince

Compromise and intolerance—A color to trust as surely as the sanctum

Of the secret garden, the minute revolutions of the North Star

A color to paint something other than the borderline—the tightrope that scars

I sisyphean chase an ultrablue

Between those two extremes I rue

Tumor and entropy — and mimicry—between

The Ultraviolet—and the Ultragreen