"botanist" poems
Through the fog of disenfranchisement he emerges
Gold watch, Gold rings, Gold hair, Lead heart
He has the resources...
He knows the secret to making money
He must know how I can make that money
So I can finally be happy
As happy as I was before I knew I needed money
Unless the secret of making money is me not having it
He has the influence...
Over those with crumbling foundations of knowledge
And foreclosed homes of empathy
Their situation is dire
They need someone to admire
What channels will this river of adulation lead to, though?
Their minds sneak across the borders of fear
into paranoia
Their hearts scale the walls of love
into hatred
He has the power...
The Botanist tells the customer that the flower is actually a ****
And he must **** it
There are Bedouin villagers who know nothing of the outside world
Except for our bombs
Will the sounds of love be heard over our tanks and guns?
He has no control...
No control of the thoughts of those that live
in the shadows of uncertainty
No control over the brotherhood all men share despite our differences
He is not the sun
And time waits for nobody
And misery finds everyone no matter what
And you can burn the witch at the stake of your fears
But her banshee screams will unleash the titan of retribution
Through all this hatred
Love will save us, right?
Or is love what led us here?
May 22, 2017
May 22, 2017 at 3:24 PM UTC
At 5 I was convinced I was
a flower
whose vocation was imitating
their final hysterical
wail
once Winter awoke from its
anorexia.
I pleaded my case with
a botanist
whose seamstress wife consented to stitch
a tutu of Kadupul
flowers,
like a fairy godmother warning of their death at
dawn.
At 16 I finally danced
their goodbye,
petals whisked off as if molted
layers of skin
and only when at the end I stood naked
did the concept of death have
definition.
Jun 7, 2014
Jun 7, 2014 at 7:13 PM UTC
Karma usually on my side
Barely took the dragon
Out for a ride.
Never a scientist,
Strictly a botanist,
Goodbye, little anarchist.
I dont want my name
On Hollywood Boulevard,
And I dont want my face
On the TV set.
I dont wanna leave all the people scarred,
When it's time to lay
On my death bed.
Loved by many, respected by all.
Stuck by you, rise and fall.
The name would ring a bell
Through thick and thin,
Heaven and Hell.
The name called out,
And the rise of a beer,
I want you to know..
...I was here.
Oct 19, 2012
Oct 19, 2012 at 1:54 PM UTC
~
*if you're feeling sinister tonight, come inside the darkroom. picture yourself pouring over mental images of a demure young botanist, loitering around the trapdoor of nostalgia, kissing someone new for the first time.
now imagine she is conscious and clustered in titillating blur, her smile beachy and airborne, with only the slightest suggestion that something troublesome is lurking underneath.
can you see her double exposure? totally tranquil, she poses with an arsenal of poisonous plants, as if she’s already slipped their venom into your tea.*
~
Apr 5, 2023
Apr 5, 2023 at 12:17 PM UTC
Certainly our city with its byres of poverty down to
The river's edge, its cathedral, its engines, its dogs;
Here is the cosmopolitan cooking
And the light alloys and the glass.
Built by the conscience-stricken, the weapon-making,
By us. Wild rumours woo and terrify the crowd,
Woo us. Betrayers thunder at, blackmail
Us. But where now are They.
Who without reproaches showed us what our vanity
has chosen,
Who pursued understanding with patience like a ***
had unlearnt
Our hatred and towards the really better
World had turned their face?
Who knows? The peaked and violent faces are exalted,
The feverish prejudiced lives do not care, and lost
Their voice in the flutter of bunting, the glittering
Brass of our great retreat,
And the malice of death. For the wicked card is dealt and
The sinister tall-hatted botanist stoops at the spring
With his insignificant phial and looses
The plague on the ignorant town.
Under their shadows the pitiful subalterns are sleeping;
The moon is usual; the necessary lovers touch;
The river is alone and the trampled flower;
And through years of absolute cold
The planets rush towards Lyra in a lion's charge. Can
Hate so securely bind? Are they dead here? Yes.
And the wish to wound has the power. And tomorrow
Comes. It's a world. It's a way.
2.3k
that plant in the window
may well resent those roots
firmly potted and positioned
on that westerly sill
held in place as it is
by those wispy tendrils
straining outwards
desperate for growth
ever-reaching for
the drifting light
of that introverted Sun
evasive though it may be
its potential remains
dirt encrusted and anaemic
as the hidden branching is
neither its stem nor leaf
nor its bud or flower
could realise the heights
that it hopes to achieve
without these buried parts
for though this tangle
is filth-covered and
far from what any wish
to be faced with
when in admiration
of such flora
without this
the evolving maturation
from ceaseless elongation
and meristematic activity
the terracotta on display
could not be filled with
this greenery so vibrant
Dec 9, 2023
Dec 9, 2023 at 9:04 AM UTC
I’m not a botanist,
or an avid gardener.
The horto I culture consists of two pots,
sits on a narrow sill
and soaks in its one-hour slit of sunshine.
This makes me unfit
to label much less
fathom the encroaching
sublime, which sprouts,
shoots, creeps, clings and endures
from far reaches beyond me.
It has spines
supple and rigid,
skins coarse, spiked, and silky,
quivering tips that are spidery,
and bunched as small dollops,
jagged teardrops and jigsaw puzzle pieces.
I’m not a botanist,
but if I were
I should still be struck dumb
by these numbing instances
a protesting tongue
insists it won’t box up
such greenery with the genial trappings
of a scientific classification,
or even the oddly
folksy catch-all ****
I can’t always tell what’s a **** what not.
l know those greedy
intruders growing at the heart
of a meticulously turned earth
to spoil the well-ordered
plots of a barely adequate vocabulary.
It gets more complicated
with the thrilling misfits
and their sturdier notions
of choking life from inhospitable beds
poured and paved
to the detriment of meeker plantings.
Yesterday I met the peeks of ten
woody red stems poking through
a patch of chunky white gravel
spread thick between two
steel rails that fled to a horizon.
I watched the breeze
shake their candelabra arms
dressed in sparse leaves
and denser seed-packed sleeves,
and they welcomed it.
I'm not a botanist
and I can’t name these plants,
but I can admit, I admired them.
Nov 13, 2010
Nov 13, 2010 at 6:20 AM UTC
Her mother named her White Dahlia, the consequence
of unplanned pregnancy while studying forensics. Or so
she told the boy selling orchids in popcorn bags (he ran out
of sheet music and poetry books). Renaming her Orchid
he’d ram into her all night so their breathing would fog up the
windows, an eternal 21C. A common misconception:
flowers have no bones. He learned what it means to
have a backbone when she broke his fangs
like sugar cubes.
A glass slide is too small a coffin for one convinced she
was “beloved”. The strawberry cigarette ash
should have been the tip-off. Rarely
will a botanist throw their own child under Industry’s wheels.
Aug 3, 2015
Aug 3, 2015 at 9:19 PM UTC
Go find for me in all of botany;
The rarest green amidst the sweetest mire.
That blooms of petals white like cottony,
Of growth 'twas serenaded by a lyre.
Replant with gentle skill by window's sill
Repose the eye that sunlight does not steal.
The blondy gaze, so fixed herein and still,
Unless the breezes kiss corona's seal.
Then flowered dance shall sway to hymns of bay
And whom shall follow trance'd with steady eyes;
Be titled botanist, of beauty's play.
Degree that yields each morn' when sun does rise.
Find that and glimpsed what fair does lay this bed,
But 'pare her side the flower, flower's dead!
Feb 16, 2019
Feb 16, 2019 at 8:34 AM UTC
Amber was an atheist,
she thought the world was dumb as hell.
Britney was a botanist,
who had a fertilizer smell.
Candice was a coroner,
a scary passion for the stiffs.
Diana was a drummer chick,
that knew a few guitar riffs.
Evelyn was evil, man,
all leather suits and chains and whips.
Farrah was a therapist,
got in my brain with swinging hips.
Greta was a gunslinger,
she'd give most anything a shot.
Hannah was a homebody-
shy as hell, but twice as hot.
Iris was an Ivy Leaguer,
thought I was a total fool.
Janice was a juggler,
who liked to play with power tools.
Kimmy taught karate,
who dated me just for the kicks.
Louise was a lyricist,
who wrote about how guys were *****
Marilyn was mostly mean,
she liked to fight and then make up.
Nancy was so negative,
I had no choice but to break up.
Opal was an occultist,
who liked to gossip with the dead.
Paula was a **********
that made me pay to come to bed.
Queenie was inquisitive,
the questions were too much to bear.
Rosie was a recluse
who never shaved or brushed her hair.
Sidney was a sinful sort,
with toys and gadgets 'neath the bed.
Tina was a twisted chick,
with thirteen voices in her head.
Ursula was uber-cool,
always on the latest trends.
Vicky was on Vicodin,
and we all know how that one ends.
Wanda was a wanderer,
that left to join a circus troupe.
Xena the exhibitionist
liked to do it on the stoop.
Yolanda was young and fine,
and nearly cost me everything.
Zoey was a Zombie fan,
she got hot when he would sing.
I'd like to say I've settled down,
but since the alphabet is done,
I'm gonna met an Ann or Anita,
and give it all another run.
Aug 27, 2016
Aug 27, 2016 at 5:19 AM UTC
Wizard of the earth; I am the botanist of yore -
Conversing with the stars until the stars can hear no more.
I read them pharmacopoeias from catacombs of lore
To fill the vacant sky with verse of those who lived before.
Poet of the sky and the ever glowing sun -
A seven-headed serpent lays in wait upon my tongue.
I sing in sacred stanzas from a phantom in my lungs
To make my spirit rise before the day is yet begun.
Jul 3, 2019
Jul 3, 2019 at 12:35 AM UTC
I might be a budding botanist.
You see I watch you take root
in the back of my mind,
while your deepviolet dreams
flower up from behind.
With my withering construct
and green disposition
your ivy league discord
leaves fetid pollution.
my limbs aren't strong enough
to hold you at bay
so I'm prone to let grow on me
whatever you say
these seedlings sap strength
and succor my faults
i could fight back
but what use against this garden gestalt
i am tripping on lilacs
or maybe just lies
and its only a matter of time
till we die
so im keeping my footing
my head above water
and were i a fish
not a lamb to the slaughter
my frame it grows thin
growing gaunt, growing weak
and i cant help but feel
this is what you would seek
then i cant help but feel
i was wrong, and so then
i will try not to go
about feeling again
Jun 29, 2016
Jun 29, 2016 at 2:59 AM UTC
I am but a few brittle bones
With a not-so-respectable amount of flesh
You have slowly become my skin
Clinging to this lost body
No sense of direction
No sense of emotion
Consuming me
Consume me
And now I cry through my teeth
As I lie from my eyes
All the while
Hiding behind
And beneath
You
Intimidation in a situation
Intimacy in simplicity
Cover me
No longer smother me
A moment's fresh air
Crisp as your gaze
Please
Do no more harm
To these legs
To these arms
I've got a blue thumb
Botanist of disappointment
I gather crops
As my mood drops
But if my fingers could speak to you
If my lips could reach out and touch you
I wonder if they'd be as gentle
As my words and movements are now
Because my friends help me get by
And you
You make me feel as though my life
Is all one constant high
But there is nothing poetic
About the way that you
Dismiss my feelings
Yet don't dismiss yourself
You are a joke
Never straying afar
From your obsession
Oppression
Or was it my depression?
We come to the end of yet another session
But I will see you before next week
Oh how weak you are
Mar 17, 2015
Mar 17, 2015 at 2:16 PM UTC
*“To rise from the ashes,
first we must burn.”*
I am trying to plant flowers.
To sprout them right out of my
Hands toes eyelashes nose and
Leave them with everything
I touch in the world.
I wish to be perpetually blooming,
But I can’t grow anything at all,
Except a sparse **** or two
From my weary war torn body
Exhausted from the calamities
Of a long fought battle.
I am fascinated with
The intoxicating idea
Of destroying myself.
Burning,
Ever so elegantly,
Into a sparkling dust
To nourish new flowers
I could never become
On my own
Daydreams of a Pyro-Botanist
Are equally consumed
With blooming and burning.
I keep setting myself on fire and
Waiting for someone to douse my flames
Before I burn myself to the ground.
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 2:05 PM UTC
The apricot tree,
So solemn in its art of creation,
Yielding fruit by square yard,
And flower blossom come spring
Holding no pleasure in its perception.
If I am the apricot tree in the fields at dawn,
You are the ladder,
The picker,
The cook,
The sugar and pan
And the jar of apricot jam,
Preserved in its perfection
For hungry mouth and seeking hands
To endulge in, come harvest.
You are the countertop in the kitchen
And the residue of spills upon it,
Caused so carefree by fingers excited
To savor God's gift
Of orange fruit
And good will.
You are the warm home
Occupied by voices and laughter
And children so eager for the day
Their screams of joy echo each room.
You are the eyes onlooking
From inside the car,
Gazing out a moving window
At the bountiful apricot blossoms,
You are the artist and beholder,
The eyes of beauty
Which turn the tree's mundane
And ordinary life
Into poetry and light of human love.
The botanist, the lover of fruit and flesh,
Picking perfect apricots,
Plucking them not only at pure ripe
But all season,
For the sake of texture and sweet.
For the tree,
Bearing fruit and blossom
Has transcended from routine
To holiday.
Such a pleasure,
Being plucked and picked,
Pleased and appreciated in true apricot
Passion.
The tree loves the lover,
And the lover loves the tree.
Mar 12, 2018
Mar 12, 2018 at 2:44 AM UTC
As a botanist she had no peer
In cajoling a plant to appear.
She would talk to them…sing
About any old thing.
And she’d fertilize often with cheer!
She lived out her life in an attic;
Horticultural chances were static.
But her care was so giving,
She earned plants a living
With a glow based on colors chromatic!
She developed a system to graft her
Young shoots twixt a wall and a rafter.
There was not quite the room
To make daffodils bloom,
So she sprinkled them often with laughter!
As the plants grew they got a concoction
That would let them move on, as an option.
And thus one new morn
Plant Parenthood was born.
They would offer themselves for adoption!
Though ado/apted, they remembered her dearly,
And the reunion they held semi-yearly
Was named after her
Though her prodigy were
Often forced into blossoming early
Not a problem.
They were used to miracles!
Dec 12, 2016
Dec 12, 2016 at 5:41 PM UTC
I noticed him
as I entered the room
I noticed how his eyes
like those of a botanist
investigated my flower
how the purple and black had spread
and raised the skin
as if my blood were tactonic plates
threatening with eruption
I noticed his smile
and I knew
how this man truly knew
these flowers
where they grew
how to obtain them
and make them bloom
I wanted my flower to bloom
Sep 6, 2013
Sep 6, 2013 at 11:24 AM UTC
why it gets more solemn around ten at night
the busy people are not around, how
so many different reasons and sights
get roiled around turned over upside now
turned over and studied like squirmy things
by a botanist in a lab or in
my brain dissected like a lab rat prone
flat on my back my tail taut my ears
droop, right then, take a specimen and find
to find it all is how the time is then
too early or late or impossible
Apr 15, 2016
Apr 15, 2016 at 11:52 PM UTC
As you change into the black top
you prefer to wear out,
I sneak a glance
to check the status
of the skinny scars
inflicted by the blade you keep
tucked under your mattress,
Old wounds mingle with new
across your gaunt olive skin,
a permanent morse code
telling the story of a pyro-botanist
who can't let herself grow.
I glance back up
at your now-empty smile
and ponder the irony
of a middle name like Mirth.
Feb 21, 2016
Feb 21, 2016 at 2:03 PM UTC
Most people skip clean over the true beauty in life,
They pick roses or peonies over daisies.
Is it because there is a higher social ideal of the overly common gestures of romance that they are valued more?
Even from childhood I've chosen the wild flowers,
Heather,foxglove,snapdragons and daisies,
Not because they're available without visiting a shop or becoming an advanced botanist,
But because they are wild and make the world more beautiful...Just like she does.
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 11:30 PM UTC
Just a day
The day is partly overcast, shadows and light
chase each other up and down a hillside,
where I came from nature is hardening
and there is already snow in the air.
Tiny lilac flowers grow under- don't know their names
( do I look like a botanist)
Only the almond tree is bare of leaves, unpicked leaves
Hang like baubles that have lost their shine.
I take a walk on the road it is cartwheel wide and has fallen
into disuse, but for generations to come it will be a healed wound
across the landscape.
In front of me, a bird blue and white has fallen
out of the sky; I pick it up- its beak is grey
It blinks and dies gracefully.
I place it on a stone its soul is still in my palm
and gently blow to set it free.
A breeze makes the leaves tremble.
Jul 17, 2017
Jul 17, 2017 at 3:12 PM UTC
*It was out of the blue.
Really why would he talk to me.
I am pleasantly plump.
size fourteen if I lie.
my hair is wild
and terminal frizzy.
he has a cut glass
English accent.
like a BBC newscaster.
I am from the Bronx.
we drank too much wine.
he took me home to my place.
I had to pay for the cab.
But it's not like paying for him
to...well...you know.
I could not walk the next morning.
he told me I was Beautiful and
the best time he had had in America.
me can you believe that.
He was a botanist from the UK
working on the nesting habits
of the speckle throated warbler
or something.
All I knew was he had ice blue eyes
a sweet accent and grey specks
in his blueness that made me
want to undress for him.
He was beautiful.
when he left in the morning
I gave him my number
on his phone.
call me I said.
but months went by.
not a word.
then when the morning
sickness came.
I realised he was still inside me.
The eclampsia came at seven months
I was hospitalised the doctors told me
I and the baby could die.
I went into a coma.
when. woke up my belly was flat
the baby I cried.
I opened my eyes and he was there.
holding my hand.
my baby I wept
they are fine Kelly
he said.
they?
you had twins a boy and a girl.
I looked up into his eyes
with the grey fleck's.
Micheal how?
I was sent back to the UK
I lost my job at the university.
I tried to call you
but no answer.
I came back on a visitors visa.
your neighbor told
me you were here.
six months later
we went for a Sunday evening
stroll in central park
it was fall the trees
were red and amber
leaves of gold
russeled under our feet.
new York was grey in fading light.
A city that hadwitnessed
many such love stories.
I looked at Micheal
his beautiful eyes
that held some kind
of optical aberration.
For they saw me as
worthy of his love.
He lifted the twins
over his head.
they laughed in delight.
I never seen anyone
as happy as him.
Unless you
count me in that is.
He said I love my family Kelly.
I whispered I love you Micheal.
Then at that moment
in the urban forrest of Cental park
on a vermillian autumn evening.
I felt him walk into
the door in my heart
that I left opened or him.
As he entered
I closed it quickly
so he could never leave.
locking it with the only key
that existed.
Then throwing it into the brambled
undergrowth of the woodlands
never to found again.*
Mar 10, 2016
Mar 10, 2016 at 9:38 PM UTC
Botany
Have you had a shower?
Yes dear, and changed my t. shirt too
you see, my dear, when I was in the amazon
collecting rare flowers, the local tribe called
me “the man who hates his face.”
Did you find a rare flower?
Yes, my lovely, I found you.
But the botanist whom I was carrying his luggage
refused to accept the human rarity
that is why your name is in posh books about
botany
Aug 24, 2020
Aug 24, 2020 at 6:26 AM UTC
It's not so much the giving. That's living, the burst from your heart that connects to the hive mind; the leaving all the doubt behind.
It's the after. Exhausted and shattered and sweating out all your exposed emotions, and nothing. No word, no glance, as you stuff all your **** back into the red suitcase that contains your world and no one else's.
There's no expectation for commendation, but you wish someone would attempt some relation as you mop up the ****** mess that once was beautiful, but is now splendorless.
Music is useless for making a statement. The whole world is trying to make you complacent and you'd smash your guitar, but your money's all spent so you cry in your bed wishing you were a poet (or a surgeon or a botanist or at least brilliant) instead.
Jul 22, 2014
Jul 22, 2014 at 1:10 AM UTC
Venus and a sun-dog in the setting day
a signal that everything's gonna work out,
okay?
botanist at the table behind a wall of succulents
telling me fungi
stuff
and the way they fixate
the soil
for plants to grow and eat
okay.
summertime there are no fields to plow
we're all off anyways
searching for happiness in a kiss
in the promise
of a long-lasting relationship
titanic orders, but that's only a myth
to Smith
maybe not the rest
they're blessed
with that floating boat of happiness
a mean end, that stuff
no means of ending that
they laugh and dance
a quirky ritual
I still cry at the loss
of innocence
goodbye kendred soul,
pass off the torch to a new you,
and bit a sweet adieu
to you,
in the way we both behaved
stumbled our way
out of the garden
and on into the earth.
For what it's worth,
I see he'll be
everything you dreamed
he could.
Jun 15, 2018
Jun 15, 2018 at 9:51 PM UTC