#peony
You do not give yourself away at once
but wait for the right light to show
how many versions of you exist
beneath a single, velvet surface
like the peony, you are a study in layers
a core that is guarded, intricate, and vast
wrapped in a softness so deliberate
it feels like a gift rather than a shield
there is a strength in how you carry
the weight of so much beauty
stoic as a bloom after a heavy rain
yet fragile enough to feel the landing
of a single crystalline flake of snow
you are the slow reveal
the fragrance that lingers in an empty room
proving that the most complex things
are often the most tender
May 11
May 11, 2026 at 9:32 PM UTC
She,
caugh ***** but at rest, posing fully attentive,
in her favored chair, a Mies van der Rohe of a
leathery chocolate color, which admittedly is most
accepting of the human frame most welcomingly
but She, gazes relaxedly & rigid, unflinching fixed,
upon on of our Friday flower self-giftations,
an array of eye filling pink and white peonies,
that have mesmerized, entranced and made
her rigidly relaxed, peaceful whimsy on her face
the seasons of life are short, the season of peonies,
is an abbreviation in human terms, perhaps a dot,
a single month a year, in truth overshadowed by
their competition, overly popularized cherry blossoms,
but these 5 P’s, are in her brief of, most pleasuring
pink peony prized possession, remarked upon
with always trace sadness throughout a diminished,
perma~lacking, imbalanced, rest-of-the year, with
sighs emanating from where her essence resides
minutes pass, I too, pass by, dithering to/fro other rooms,
but She, transfixed, breathing quietly, she neither notices,
or acknowledges my temporal interruptions in her moment
of possession by the robust busting opening of the flowers,
an eclectic, electric charging of amentia, for she is
enwrapped and entranced
in an emotional place only that She,
this woman,
shares with no one else, a Universe tiny but all encompassing,
her eyes winnowed and windowed upon the extravagance of
the beauty that comes so briefly…
May 6, 2024
May 6, 2024 at 12:06 PM UTC
Drunk, I rise and approach the moon in the lake,
There was a peony.
Amidst a solitary night, bound by sorrow,
I Inquire the peony.
For whom do you shed your petals and leaves,
for whom do you bloom?
May 12, 2020
May 12, 2020 at 12:09 AM UTC
Taking a stroll through the mountains with my friend,
We saw a peony, its petal glitter in specks of snow,
Buds that were the blossoms of springs.
That day we questioned the flowers,
But the flowers do not speak.
Alas, our questions remained unanswered.
May 11, 2020
May 11, 2020 at 10:10 PM UTC
I strain to return to myself—
a peony dewy-eyed, unbeknownst to
the bittersweet taste of your chocolate eyes,
yet biting into it
while you watch.
I dared to do that.
I became your dream
with my pure red mouth,
arched back,
eyes singing.
You wanted to listen some more, didn’t you?
But then, that is all you ever did:
You wanted,
nothing more, nothing less,
and look what you’ve done;
My heart crumbled into pomegranate seeds—
I pick them up on my knees,
smear my mouth with them,
staining it red
as I eat them.
I pretend they are remnants of
the good girl I used to be,
white peony petals.
I don’t want you any longer;
I want her back.
Dec 10, 2017
Dec 10, 2017 at 10:28 AM UTC
She has a heart of cedar color
And dreams in shades of peony and lotus stems.
She leaves the smell of cyclamen and ripe apricots
Behind her,
Those who are crying in the shadows of Magnolias
Are finding a shelter within her.
Sometimes I imagine that I'm the sea foam
That is touching her ankles
And the air that envelops her lips,
Absorbing her every move,
That is reflected in the mosaic of her pupils.
Her thoughts are sleeping in the depths of my veins,
In every pore that absorbs her voice
I can hear her breathing.
I remain frozen in her existence
And in the contours of her shadow,
All of what I have seek so far
I have found in every thing on which she brushed.
After all,
I'm just a pale reflection of the stars
In her night sky,
The dying firefly in her garden
Of white poppies and wild rose hips.
Jun 4, 2015
Jun 4, 2015 at 6:08 AM UTC