Best Synaesthesia Poems
Colour hides in a whitely glow
every colour we’ve ever known
Reflective rays a spectrum show
Coloured days, names and numbers
See the world through coloured wonders.
Think in colour, don’t you?
Your name clearly blue
Synaesthesia your my life
Colouring my every thought
Spectrum white and every sort
Close my eyes and you are there
Years of coloured thoughts to share.
color awe
so crystal as to hear an
enigma
whiffed fragrance
a strangeness to scarcely taste
obscure scenes
light is sown
feel the warmth that follows miles
minds do smile
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"An individual whose conscious awareness is such that a sound becomes fused with a sense of color and taste; for whom each fleeting impression engenders a vivid, inextinguishable image; for whom words have quite different meanings than they do for us—such a person cannot mature in the same way others do, nor will his inner world, his life history tend to be like others'."
from:
Luria, A. R. & Solotaroff, Lynn (translator) (1968) The mind of a mnemonist: a little book about a vast memory. Jonathan Cape
My Five Senses
For someone with synaesthesia,
I am just quite dumbfounded,
In understanding all my five senses,
That leaves me buzzing, ungrounded!
You see, it’s not very clear,
As to why this does happen,
But I see, hear, smell, taste and touch things,
As if they’re quite apparent.
I see things in color,
Like words, numbers, and notes.
Which often leaves me in a blunder,
To quote or unquote!
I taste more than just food,
Like air, space and mood,
And often compare it,
To a summer in June.
I hear most things out loud,
Like smell touch and crowds,
For where there is one, the others are around.
And often they all blend together somehow.
So, what’s simply the norm for her, them, and you,
Are just all my five senses, demanding a cue.
And if ever you meet me or another as similar,
Don’t bother to question, because for us it's quite familiar.
Date of poem 25 July 2018
Synaesthesia is hard to say and somewhat hard to understand,
Not a disease nor a disorder, but I experience it first hand,
Like the sounds, tastes, smells and colours that can be felt by a band,
The music inspires and engulfs every nerve, every feeling, every gland,
Feeling like a lettuce from the feeling of a winter morning air,
The grass tastes so fresh and the scent fills my tummy completely unaware,
Seeing white and tasting air, this is something thats sort of rare,
Numbers and names colour coded, no other condition could compare,
Every taste has a colour, every colour has a taste,
Sometimes overwhelmed I need to set limits and a pace,
As it is not the first one here who wins the race,
Though it is different, this condition I now embrace.
I am writing you in purple. Not the word—
the taste: that iron bite of violet petals
crushed between molars, the way they stick
to the roof of the mouth like communion wafers
dipped in wine gone slightly wrong. You understand,
of course, that I can’t help but eat
each sentence as I write it. The ink
bleeds grape-skin bitterness across my tongue,
tannins puckering the soft flesh
where speech should live.
The envelope waits on my desk, fat
with pages I’ve been licking at the edges.
Violet. That’s the specific shade
of metal—not silver, not quite lead—
the taste of costume jewelry warming
against a throat, or blood
when you’ve bitten down too hard inside your cheek
and tried to hide it, swallowing.
I seal this letter with my teeth.
The glue tastes like the end of something:
overripe, about to split, that moment
when a grape becomes obscene
in its sweetness, when fermentation starts
inside the skin and everything turns
to wine or vinegar—there’s hardly
any difference, really, just time
and what you’re willing to call it.
You’ll taste this when you open it.
The paper will dissolve like sugar
steeped too long, and purple
will coat your mouth for days: brutal,
gorgeous, the specific flavor of a color
that exists between a bruise
and a flower, between the blue
of suffocation and the red of wanting.
I’m sorry. I know you asked for yellow.
But yellow tastes like cowardice and butter,
and I have only purple left to give—
this bitter sweetness, medicinal and lush,
the aftertaste of beauty
or of poison. Sometimes
even I can’t tell which