You glow
Your radiated purple hue
Just touching you multiplies my atoms
Just touching your pedal is cancerous

I grew you in a chemical spill
I watered you every day
With my dappling of sunshine
I hoped to elevate your foliage

You kept reaching out
You reached for more nature
Until your sickly festered roots
Tore you in another direction

You grew towards a reactor
Beyond the need for gardening
You grew towards the processing plant
Beyond the dappling of sunshine

You keep growing and growing
But you won't grow anywhere
But further into your toxic
Pedals never face the sunshine

All you want is clean rain you say
All you want is some sun
All you do is lay there in the waste
All you do is wait for it to be done

All you do is grow mutant fruit
All you do is grow your thorns
I'm trying to live in the sunlight here
While a new gardener collects your scorn

I threw fertilizer over toxic waste
I gave it some fresh new earth
I planted roses in your place
I allowed my garden rebirth

The roses are coming in just fine
I'll expect them still next June
They grow towards sunlight every day
They're my positive giving negative prune

I hope you like to wasteland
I hope you like the sun at your back
I'll keep growing my Fresh Roses
I can't grow your Toxic Lilac

this boy
is so very muscular
and handsome
and sweet
and so very
african
he thinks
jesus brought us together
and he likes my body
just the way it is
he doesn't try to
change anything
about me
my dad would hate him
not because dad's racist
but just because he thinks black men
are rapists
(maybe that DOES make him racist...?)
but then again
dad hates all boys
that like his daughters
i don't know
i feel happy
but too many things
make me smile
i can never be sure
if they're worth something

You still look beautiful
despite rough finger tips,
arms thin as twigs
and dry cracked lips.
Take a breath
you've done far too much crying,
dry your cheeks,
try to forget you're dying.

Sailing on the star streams reaching past the trees
looking for reflection in moons of lily seas

Crossing wild oceans of tumbling rocky waves
that toss me in the air, with no direction leading, spinning me away

Til in a dream I find you, last night so calm the water, smoothed my fever
lovely kisses rang, fragrant music ever sweetly sang

Until I wake to find, morning brings a crashing wave
you've sailed, swiftly fading from a silken dream