Poppies blossom like open cuts.
Ripe and red, they fill the air
With a cloying sweetness
So potent anyone downwind
Must shut their eyes and breathe
Through open mouths. Tasting
The breath of flowers, they grow
Nauseous and afraid.
The fields sway in the hot breeze
Until they resemble an ocean aflame -
It is here, among these poppies, I have
Found the blood of the Earth.
It is moist and toxic, an acid eating away the soles
Of all that wade through it.
How many gaunt, pale bundles of bone
Rest below these soft, red petals?
No one dares to count.
People do not fear such
Lovely things - if they’ve only seen
Pictures. How nice it must be
To know nothing of poppies
But their color, their shape.
They seem almost beautiful -
But you know better.
You have stood waist deep in the
Malignant fields, breathing the air
That slowed your limbs -
Turning your arms and legs into pendulums
Swaying to the beat of the buds
That encircle them -
Until you knelt, weighed down,
Nearly submerged by saccharine terrors,
And cried, hoping the water leaking from your heart
Would put out the fires you find yourself embracing.
After all, during the darker hours
Any light is better than no light at all
(Or so something whispers in your tired ear).
You know the horror of poppies -
But still you have yet to plunge
Past the black eyes of those red beasts -
For when the wind blows clean, cold
Air to you what do you do?
You raise your arms and let yourself
Feel as though you can fly -
And one day…one day
You will look down
And see yourself above
A ground free of poppies.
For a friend
