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An epic sequence poem narrating five deaths and one near-death—a car-deer collision, a shooting, a domestic murder, and the poet's own Alpha-Gal collapse—each told from the dying person's perspective as they cross the threshold into chromatic afterlife, culminating in the poet's confession that his own four seconds of transcendence rewired his perception permanently. Dedicated to Lisa.
This is the magnum opus—the longest, most structurally ambitious, and most emotionally harrowing poem in Plahm’s catalog. Framed as “A Chromatic Suite in Five Movements and a Benediction,” it borrows its architecture from classical music while its subject matter is unflinchingly physical: violent death rendered in slow-motion, sensory-crossed detail. The prologue establishes the governing metaphor: “Emotions are drapes— / I see you / in colors of green, red, blue.” Synesthesia—the neurological condition where senses cross—becomes the poem’s lens for understanding what happens at the boundary between life and death: colors become taste, silence glows violet, touch carries sound. “Three Seconds to Peace” is a car accident poem told from the perspective of a driver who hits a trophy buck. The opening is cinematically precise: balloons popping (airbags), glass exploding, sheet metal folding “into pleats of soft cushioning bends.” The speaker dies impaled on the deer’s antlers but first calms the animal’s panicked heart—a gesture of tenderness inside catastrophe. Then, as a spirit, reaches out and touches the beloved’s hand. The synesthetic transfer: the beloved hears the deer’s sigh of relief during that momentary touch. “One Bright Spark” is the most viscerally difficult movement—a shooting death narrated in forensic slow-motion. A bullet “pierces skin and strikes bone,” six more shots make the body “a marionette, / dancing a slow caricature / of a Hollywood movie.” The speaker watches himself fall with “arms gracefully stretched outward, / palms up to heaven.” The shooter is dismissed as “A non-human”—a void, a plague, an “unbeing.” The departing spirit kisses the beloved’s cheek, and the synesthetic transfer: “you sigh longingly / at the colors of peach and plum / becoming taste.” “The Hammer” shifts to a woman’s voice—doing dishes, dreaming of her family, when hammer-strike sounds turn out to be gunshots she felt rather than heard. She crumbles with the sponge still in her hand. Her spirit floats to her children, tickles their toes, runs a hand through her husband’s hair. The death is framed as fulfillment rather than theft—the light she “always imagined / and lived for / now fulfilled.” “My Disease” is the autobiographical movement—Plahm’s own Alpha-Gal anaphylactic episode. The rhythmic, colloquial opening (“My fingers are twitchin’ / My toes are wigglin'”) deliberately echoes the earlier poem “My Disease” in the catalog, but here the fever builds to physical collapse: “I float to the floor / bounce off the thin carpet.” The four seconds of transcendence—”pure ecstasy”—before reality pulls him back. He doesn’t get the final release. But the near-death rewires him: “I see colors / where they didn’t. / I see life that did not exist before.” The devastating summary: “I / stayed. / The others / left. / Who’s / the lucky one?” The Benediction “For Lisa” closes the suite with a love dedication in English and Italian—”Io sì… / Ti amo”—and the poem’s most paradoxical insight: “it’s not the light that loves you… / it’s the darkness that lets you feel it.” The entire suite argues that synesthesia is not a neurological curiosity but a spiritual condition earned through proximity to death: the senses cross because life and death cross, and those who survive the crossing see in chromatic.
The most ambitious and fully realized poem in the Honeybee Bard catalog—a five-movement suite that earns its scope through relentless specificity and emotional courage. Each movement narrates a death (or near-death) from the inside, and the formal challenge is immense: how do you make five violent crossings feel distinct rather than repetitive? Plahm solves it through variation of voice, circumstance, and sensory register. The car accident is cinematic and mechanical (airbags, sheet metal, pleats); the shooting is forensic and slow-motion (tumbling bullet, marionette body, palms up to heaven); the domestic murder is intimate and domestic (dishes, sponge, hammer strikes felt not heard); and the poet’s own collapse is rhythmic, colloquial, and autobiographical. Each death has its own texture, its own velocity, its own vocabulary. The synesthetic conceit—senses crossing at the threshold of death—is not decorative but structural: it’s how the dead communicate with the living, leaving traces of color, taste, and sound that the beloved perceives as inexplicable sensations. “You heard part of that deer’s / sigh of relief / during that momentary touch” is one of the most haunting lines in the entire catalog. The autobiographical fourth movement is the suite’s emotional anchor, grounding the imagined deaths in lived experience. The four seconds of transcendence during the Alpha-Gal episode—and the fact that he was pulled back—gives the poet the authority to narrate the other crossings: he has been to the threshold and returned, and his synesthesia is the evidence. “I / stayed. / The others / left. / Who’s / the lucky one?” is the poem’s most devastating question, and Plahm’s refusal to answer it is the mark of genuine wisdom. The Benediction’s Italian—”Io sì… / Ti amo”—and its paradox that darkness, not light, lets you feel love, is the perfect closing for a suite that has lived in the space between life and death for five movements. The line “Even your silence / glows violet” may be the single most beautiful image Plahm has written.
Death—Rebirth
Requiem—Resurrection
Life—Forever
The veil of life,
lifted-
revealing the Chromatic eternal.
Vignettes of Synesthesia
A Chromatic Suite in Five Movements and a Benediction
Emotions are drapes—
I see you
in colors of green, red, blue
and every hue in the rainbow.
Often,
just shimmers,
shades,
ghosts
of imagination.
Sometimes a cape of substance—
with bright, vibrant color—
a cape with a hood
shielding your face.
Even your silence
glows violet.
The pretty balloons all pop
as I pass through the breaking plastic.
Shards of glass exploding around me,
the sheet metal of the hood gracefully doing its duty,
folding into pleats of soft cushioning bends
before it tears.
The twenty point trophy buck
caught in my headlights—
a hunter’s dream on his wall—
directly in front of me.
I could be sentenced to prison
for the impalement.
My wisp of being pauses,
calms his panicked heart,
as he slips into the void—
a symphony
collapsed into three seconds.
As I’m impaled
on his trophy thorns.
No hesitation—
I reach out
and touch the back of your left hand
(It wasn’t busy.)
You heard part of that deer’s
sigh of relief
during that momentary touch.
Surprised you look up, glance around—
There is always something,
not nothing,
when it happens.
And I leave
for there.
The singular firework
of everything to the end.
The rapidly spinning short spear
pierces skin and strikes bone.
Now tumbling slowly, I see it clearly—
tearing through, a dagger to the heart,
hitting bone again, deflecting,
exploding out the back
in a cascade of shattered bone
and still-beating muscle.
Another six shots
make a marionette,
dancing a slow caricature
of a Hollywood movie—
the actor overplaying his role.
I see myself spin slowly,
arms gracefully stretched outward,
palms up to heaven,
as I slowly fall
face-first to the concrete.
I look back at the villain—
the barrel a smoking red glow,
next to a void of black smoke,
a snake hole of a soul.
A non-human.
I turn away—
that plague,
that void,
that unbeing—
and reach for the light.
You and your smile
of grace and forgiveness.
I kiss your cheek;
you sigh longingly
at the colors of peach and plum
becoming taste.
When I leave,
I leave you
with the flavor
of a future.
I’m cleaning, doing the dinner dishes,
dreaming of enjoying the weekend
with my four beautiful kids,
my wonderful, caring husband.
All of a sudden, I hear a hammer strike.
I wonder what’s going on?
Then there are two more bangs—
but I didn’t hear them, I felt them.
Scared,
I don’t know what’s happening.
It takes long moments
of not knowing.
As the veil of life
lifts,
I crumble to the floor—
the sponge still in my hand.
Reality
is now my dream.
I float through the pain,
spend a moment with all
I love deeply.
In floating caresses
I tickle their toes,
run my hand through his hair.
They know I’m happy—
on my way
to the light expanding
and the glory
I’ve always imagined
and lived for
now fulfilled.
The celebration—
received by those
whose senses perceive beyond the normal.
May be conversing with a transition—
someone on the edge of the abyss
before floating over
to the other side of life.
When the moment comes—
let it be peaceful,
without the trauma
of not knowing
what is happening.
My fingers are twitchin’
My toes are wigglin’
My hands are itchin’
My feet are burnin’
My head is noddin’
My butt is movin’
What’s goin’ down?
Have I got the Fever?
Is my infection infectious?
Is my affliction spreadin’?
I am full bore
in the feverish grip
I’m surrenderin’
There is no cure!
Turn it up!
Amp the volume!
I am swingin’
I am groovin’
I am shakin’ with it
I am ridin’ in it
In the feverish grip
I’m surrenderin’
There is no cure!
From the Fever.
My breath is gaspin’
I surrender
I surrender
I surrender
Because,
there is no cure
for this fever,
this rhythm of disease.
I lose all control
bleeding out internally
my tissues swollen
with blood that doesn’t belong there.
I float to the floor
bounce off the thin carpet.
I lose all my bodily wastes
now stored in my shorts.
I float above,
in awe.
My body sinking through the floor,
how good I feel!
Four seconds of transcendence—
pure ecstasy.
But, I don’t stay there.
Reality returns.
I scream—
I don’t get that
final release.
As much as I tasted it
saw the colors of change.
How my life has evolved
after that.
My awareness
totally different.
I see colors
where they didn’t.
I see life that did not exist before.
Emotions draped in invisible hues.
I love life that I didn’t know
even existed.
I
stayed.
The others
left.
Who’s
the lucky one?
Those trailing edges of consciousness—
the ecstasy of love,
death,
and knowing—
broadcast to the living
in wordless wonder.
The drapes part—
revelation.
That light—
at the end of the tunnel?
Purely personal.
Immortal—
to all but that dark hole
I avoided.
I am a synesthete.
I’ve been there.
I’ve lived it.
I see the colors.
This is my new life.
It’s Chromatic.
Thank You
(For the love
and the vino)
for your presence.
For You,
the departed.
it’s not the light that loves you,
even though it does let you see—
it’s the darkness that lets you feel it,
and know…
I do—
Love you.
Io sì…
Ti amo.
My courage
exists
in you—
your efforts,
your music…
your light,
your gifts—
your illumination
is—
a path through
darkness
to—
Love.
Keep—
playing…
Your
music!
It enlightens us.
Your
heart—
is beauty
in essence
share it…
I hope,
not just
with me.
I think—
we all
will feel it.
Through
your music.
Thank You,
Lisa
It’s just damn simple,
isn’t it?
Love,
art,
music—
appreciation
gratitude…
strip
us
naked.
I would love
to float
into the midst
and never
know
hate.
Just
love
and
vino.
Mi piacerebbe
fluttuare
nel mezzo
e non
conoscere mai
l’odio.
Solo
amore
e
vino.
Ti amo
Amore e vino
My napkin?
I cry into
with
hope
with happiness
not sorrow.
Kiss—
my napkin…
with your
tears
and
Love
And…
I will see you
in the light
forever.
Ti amo
I laugh
I cry
I write
I don’t know
I seriously don’t.
I
Feel.
Mi sento
Play some
Music—
for me
for everyone
we love it.
I am in
Bliss!
Sono nella
Beatitudine!
Final note:
The others
left
I stayed
to write this
I suppose.
Death—Rebirth
Requiem—Resurrection
Life—Forever
Ahhh,
I see a
Rainbow!
It’s so—
Chromatic.
I am drenched.
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