Crossed Wires

A side effect
was synesthesia.*
Not in the tablets' literature...
no, not the bittiest of mentions.
So: scary when it struck.

The thunder cloud that had been hovering
above us for the past few hours
began to lose its blackness
and to smell and taste of liquorice.
The lightning fizzed
on two rear taste buds
to my tongue, that long ago
the doctor called defunct. The wind,
a gentle pea green zephyr in the early morning,
had worked up through the gears:
pale cobalt blue through indigo
to madder brown and crimson cruise control,
'til finally the the cloud released
the heaviest of thunder rolls.
Long, shimmering peals flaunted themselves above
the low hills and fell in waves as though
some heavenly dancer danced the dance of seven veils.
Some were plain. White. Silver. Yellow. Grey.
But others were more sexually explicit:
kitsch, vulgar, raffish in the jazz and clash of hues.

As evening drew the shades across the sky
I smelt the perfume of the stars. The Pole Star
stank of fish left too long on the beach (at least,
it was the Pole Star that I blamed), but most
were replicating smells they'd picked up in the garden
before the roses learnt to sing instead.
A real dawn chorus greeted me next morning
with floribundas easing up and down the scales
and climbers yodelling away
for all that they were worth.

The thunder was still hanging on.
More distant now. I heard it
as it echoed in the valleys deep between the hills...
Yes! Heard it! Echo! The tablets were losing their bite...


*Synesthesia: When one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when stimulation of the hearing produces the sensation of colour.

The synesthesia prompt by Victoria C. Sloto - along with more info' - can be found at dVerse Poets Pub