Yellow.

Yellow.

The color of Joy,

The color of sparkling cheerfulness on a cozy summer day.

The color of happiness and warmth as you embrace the sun in its whole and leap into its warm, pleasurable heat.

The color of c o n f i d e n c e and curiosity  as the energy overfills and seeps through the gaps between your teeth. 

The color of creativity as you acquire an idea so bright it overshadows even the color itself.

   The color that brings you light when times are as dark as The Door to Hell.

         The color you use to paint your walls, then scaling to your whole house.

             The color that makes you choose only the food in that hue to eat.

                     The color you obsess over until it consumes you whole within the next hour.

                                  The color that makes you queasy from sweaty anxiety because of the sheer amount of it.

The color of insecurity turns glacial as you drop dead into the hot bubbling sun.

The color that turns you mad as you scowl at things you used to not mind.

The color that turns you on your heels and lets you slip and fall.

The color that used to make you smile

is now 

too

much.

Author's Note

written: Oct 2023
Rationale: This Modernist poem was inspired by my own favorite color: yellow. I previously learned in design class that too much yellow in a room may cause stress and frustration, which was connected to the message of this poem: ‘too much of something good will turn it bad’. The purpose is to warn people not to obsess over one thing too much or it may lose its original purpose. The marked presence is visual imagery (lines 4-8), with anaphora, alliteration (lines 4, 5), and allusion to Turkmenistan’s ‘Door to Hell’ (line 9). The change in font emphasizes the words according to their meaning, which makes the poem unique (Modernist). As the poem progresses, the more yellow appears, symbolizing how the person quickly becomes obsessed with the color and ends up losing their balance in life (line 17). The person becomes more irritable (line 16) until it’s too much for them to bear (lines 19-21), hence feeling insignificant (the change in word size).