Blue Ink.

I recently – because I am a vain creature, and easily impressed by the trappings and rituals of a subject – ordered a new pen. A fountain pen, hopefully one with which I will write beautiful things. I had a fountain pen that my mother bought for me after winning an award for poetry in middle school, and they have a certain significance to me.

It wasn’t expensive, not really, but it was more than I would usually pay for something to make a mark on the page with. To my horror, though, I found it necessary to buy some ink for it, since the cartridge it comes with was… was… blue ink!

Blue Ink.

I hate blue ink.
Blue like a boring school jumper,
Or boundless busy-work days,
Bristling with bumbling, blackboard, bollocks.

Blue like the suit of the banker,
Or the blue of the blood of pale-skinned nobles,
Blithe in the bastions of their battle-won bureaucracy,
Their disdain for me ringing like the chime of ill-gotten coin.

Blue like a non-photo blue line,
The draftsman’s pencil, the gridded page.
“Nothing you ever write is real”, it says,
“Nor ever will be, unless it’s written in black,
A colour too permanent, too stable,
For a writer even twice your fragile age”.