On the meaning of colors in poems

[tectak]

This is a rather old piece of mine that I was reasonably proud of back when I wrote it. Over time I've come to believe it could be sharpened a bit (or a lot), but I've been afraid to rework it lest I destroy it - as such, I thought it best to seek a second opinion before jumping into a massacre. Here goes:
Hello ritw, 
I think you write well. You choose a theme and stick to it. Commitment verse. By the end of this crit I will aready be thinking of someone reading it...so I will take it slowly, and probably orange. Ahaaa...you see what I did there? So did you. So there IS a problem of connectivity...it may be just one problem , it may be a whole genre. We shall see.


On the meaning of colors in poems

By the end of the story,
you’re already thinking
of someone reading it,
and you say to him:
Read it slowly
for the words were
written slowly in
a blue that had slowed
to almost black.Italics make the reader stop and think...why? So you are one up already. The next thing the reader wants is the answer. Here we have an uquantifiable time element....or perhaps more correctly, time AND space. I need to know exactly HOW  and WHERE you are "saying" to the "someone" "read it slowly. The Italics make me think that this stanza is important. Make it so, please. Tell me the answer to that first riddle and then, perhaps, I will get the connection between blue and black /miles per hour. It's not that I want to be picky but the IMPORT of the stanza has just passed me by. Good punctuation, by the way, but a colon as an intro to NARRATION is probably not advisable....even stylistically.

Blue
/bluː/
nounIs it? A mystery. Good.
1. (Informal.)
For there was a petrol pump 5km down the highway
and the sun was beating down and what I thought most about the
clump of trees nondescript to a city eye,
was why no one stopped here, or perhaps, why I did.The switch-back syntax has tossed you off the mare's back...the usual advice it to get back on, quickly. Adjust things, tighten things and dominate the beast. To begin. What is the "For" for? What conditional squeeze has the dictionary definition of blue got on you? It is an unnecessary word in the wrong place and with nothing to say for itself. Omit it. That easy...just omit it. The "and"..."and"...is naive. You may well have a VERY GOOD REASON for this speech idiosyncracy but you do not look to be ten years old in you profile pic. The strangeness extends in to the structure of the stanza...I have no solid thought on your solid thought. There is a temptation, and you may get some joy if my response is correct, to say "So what?" So what?

Black
/blak/
adjectiveJust give me some time...I am not with you yet.
1. (Informal.)
Emptiness always spreads from anonymous places,
places which change form in details that are occasional
metaphors. The morning has come and gone, and at noon
you see everything but never see enough.I'm sorry, but this reads like pseudo-profundity. It is hopelessly statemental and thus open to opinion..so I question the assertion that "emptiness" first of all spreads, and that even if you COULD convince me of it's jam-like quality I would still be at odds with your unnamed source. OK...I'm actually getting in to analysis of meaning here...and I'm sinking...in conclusion, then...it is too obscure to be meaningful BUT in a real and wordy sense it is intriguing...is that enough?






Black was the color
at night
of a frosted glass window
framed in Teak.
The wind lent a sepia tone
to a monochrome world.Let's call it synesthesia....everyone else does. Now the thing makes some sense...I really don't care if I am wrong because you haven't told me otherwise. See my opening remarks on the use of italics. It all seems so long ago.

Sepia
/ˈsiːpɪə/
nounNo...I say adjective. Why does it matter? 
1. (Formal.)
Our homes tell us we are aging, that the creases of the world
are making their way into our skin. We have accustomed ourselves
to the absence of movement – Standing still as we are thrown back in time.Not good punctuation. If you use the dash you can drop the capital on Standing...though a comma would do as well if not better.
We reached out to each other’s arms only to drown in an endless distance.Again, some very nice writing in here but you make it in to a shopping list. As a "whole" piece of work, the links are becoming weaker. I think you may need to ditch the idea in favour of writing a poem...I know you can do it. This last stanza tells me so. No more of the same from this crit. Go to end.




Black faded into grey and
through it you could see me 
in pigmented shades, 
faded and intense, 
at uncanny intervals.


Grey
/greɪ/
noun
1. (Formal.)
When the clouds came as foretold, they brought with them only
certain truths while obscuring others. When they sent their waters
crashing down onto a half formed world, our questions danced naked 
in a muddy revelry that ever so slightly was eternal.       that was ever so slightly...but I don't still it like.





And as the tendrils
of your silence
teetered in through cracks
I was reborn in scarlet
on Zen garden snow.

Scarlet
/'skɑ:lət/
noun
1. (Informal.)
The words were still lovers when they burned apart.
Their ashes left a bittersweet, gravelly taste.

Someone will tell me I have no poetic soul and that is why this is in the Lost and Found department of my mind. I admit to avoiding the obscure-to no-good-purpose but sometimes I feel that poets waste themselves on trying to find some way to get lots of good thoughts in to one BIG poem. My only advice...as always, take it or leave it...would be to take any one of these "thoughts" and make a poem of it. Or just call it Synesthesia and list them all with any colour of your choice...I hear puce sounds surprisingly good.  
Best, 
 tectak