Sticky young hands
Clutching magnolias
Holding them out
Like an offering.
The unrequited love
Of years to come
Glistens in his eyes
For but a moment.

Sharp young minds
Clutching magnolias
Spinning webs of imagination
Like silk worms and spiders.
The webs, soon to be tainted
With lies and flies
And magnolias.

Bright pink magnolias
Epitome of womanhood
To brighten the rainy day
When he layed magnolias
On his mother's grave.
Only a child,
Weeping into his father's
Sullen form.
To young to understand
Death.

Sticky young hands
Clutching magnolias
Holding them out
Like a promise
To remember.

Sandbags
weigh down the young lovers
they bloom every summer
like the magnolias

My compass
and your North Star
undiscovered
we plant our seeds
in the rich soil of kindness
in hopes it blooms for others
like the magnolias

The summer heat
only bearable
when you’re the mosquito
biting my veins
so they pump blood rapidly
when our green eyes meet
Every summer
my love blooms for you
like the magnolias

Delicately pink hearts gently unfurl
From nests of lively minds;
There is nothing weak about Southern women
We are supposed to wear ugly dresses,
Enamel bugs,
French scarves that wrap around and
Tie us all together from the inside out
Football and sassy new haircuts might not make faces look younger,
But they can lift spirits
And just because you spend all day advising others
Of their secret trials
Doesn't mean that you can hold your family in a cage,
Golden and happy though you may want things to be.
Remember that if you feel new, an outsider,
Your personal tragedies seeming too much to bear,
You will always find comfort in laughter
Especially if laughter through tears is your favorite emotion.
You might not pick up boys or money,
But friendship steeps in small salons
Like sweet tea.
Prickly sarcasm and pessimism aren't always the hallmarks
Of a heart devoid of caring,
It's just a natural response after two deadbeat husbands and
Three ungrateful children; somewhere in all of it is a promise
Of hope.
And even in a barren womb new life is discovered,
And even in death joy is found,
And even through pain,
Sisterhood blooms,
Delicate steel petals enveloping grieving hearts.

i can perpetually encapsulate the images
around me, of the outer-reaches of
suburbia with o.t.t.'s billy the kid strikes back...
the haunt of the place, outer-reaches suburbia...
you haunt the place with a chance traffic
of deer, foxes, and domesticated cats
crafting pacts with foxes to be un-edible
with the fox snouts readied for the blooming
scent of sardines, or some other
dietary requirement in black bin bags... a lovely place,
hazy, misty, enigmatic forest readied for
the lost soul in the dark to tread its path,
i know, the architecture of the place
bald patches everywhere, none used for
agriculture, just aesthetics, but still
the odd chance of complete darkness
encapsulating you to see nothing
while you walk in the doubled shade of trees
at night... this is the feel of the place, my vicinity,
it's not an urban environment of trade-secrets
of slang... that slang is way gone,
gone entombed in the 20th century cut of
the umbilical chord... it's gone gone gone...
there's no new cool, no new groove,
no jukebox humpty-dumpty beat-box
look smart... jive or grime...
the genocide of south america proves my point,
the chain "linkage" from ape to man
is among the unique ****** features of Chileans...
i wonder: Aztec, Mayan...
well, genocide via european diseases...
but we get a hot coco latte in return... thumbs up!
and then posthumous fame came to the one
who asked for peace... who said:
i want to drown the sound of modern traffic with
music, autumn is too subtle with falling leaves
falling notes to paper to guide me,
and spring is too deaf to be sound-testing
instruments for the two full symphonies of vivaldi
that are summer and winter, the two seasons
perpetuating a lack of change...
spring and autumn are vivaldi's pre nuptials...
they're not symphonies, they're preludes
should they be translated by jazz impromptus...
there are no constants in them, the fluxes,
the magnolias this year bloomed too early,
you could hardly see the pink and corpulent
flowering, the bloom of magnolias this year
showered no prawn pink for the eyes,
they hardly blossomed, shrivelled skin of petals
and excess bishopcric colouring (purple),
anorexia you might say, shrivelled up anorexia
attired in bishop...
tattoo me earth, with your changes,
make me an organic animate, rather than an
inorganic animate... let me chisel the facts into
myself that i see... don't give me the ***** of
regurgitated facts of having experienced education...
leave me be... leave me to experience this world
without aided information as a way of stabilisation
my experience of it... let me be the mini Columbus...
taking but a step but travelling a whole acre of open sea
diagonally... passing both electric air
and incubated waters in a glass bottle...
let me not unearth the metals of hades...
the metals, which when storing waters with the ship
heaving tremble and heartbeat agitate the waters
stored in them (aluminium of the beer can as example)
to a storm, a tsunami a frothing wave...
give unto me the storing of the voyage's ambition
in eye as in glass, the carbonated waters in bottle
insulated by glass and mirror, yet otherwise agitated
by metal; a message in a bottle, my captain's notebook
noting with a readied hand, unshaken, deciphered easily,
more easily than a student under examination:
sweaty hand oiling a pen to slip and mishandle
a g.c.s.e. a* grade of content reduced by poor handwriting
to a c grade... ready me for the voyage into
the sea of cosmos and eventual death.

"Ma'm,
can you remember the name of that tree?
the one with the big leaves?"
He asks me, raising a withered hand
towards the young magnolia,
not yet blooming.
"Magnolia, I believe."
A light comes into his clouded eyes.
"Ah! Magnolia! Thank you."
he says, before shuffling away.
I pause for a moment.
Staring at the sapling.
Something stirs in memory.
Something deep, or shallow,
I cannot tell.
Memory, none the less.
I feel as though I should remember
a meaning behind the white flowers,
and broad leaves,
but I draw a blank.

You saved me in your moms car the other day
holding my hand just in time to stop tears exploding out from my eyes. Because I'm very claustrophobic and I ******* hate small Hondas.

You let me hold you when we watched Steel Magnolias with your mom crying in the back saying Im sorry I walked in on your movie, I'm such a cryer.

We went into your room to listen to vinyl and even though it wasn't what I expected, I love it all.

You answered all my questions about things in your room, and showed me your best fiends angry poetry on your wall.

You answered every question as if every item was a priceless  antiquity, even the bottle of Mardi Gras beads and how you watched a documentary about the people in factories who made them, and how you just can't bring yourself to throw them away.

I don't even know if this is a poem but I'll put it up anyway. It may not be poetic but ever word that passes your lips it's Hemingway and Emerson to me.

cold and alone i am
bruised
where you touched me.
bees crawl my skin
and burrow down
to my sorrowful heart.

magnolias, crushed underfoot -
this was once a happy place -
but all that remains is
the stench of your lust.

i think my limbs were snapped
by your
sheer force
as you claimed my innocence
as i cried out to a god i don't believe in.

ghosts walk these gardens:
ghosts of the children
you leave broken
amongst the trampled magnolias.

i start,
gasping for air,
choking back sobs.
but this is not a dream.

the magnolia was a bit of a *******
(as far as trees can be *******)
and like very many other things—
like japanese candy from the Fugi Mart in Greenwich
                                      (across from the McDonald’s and next to
                                             the music shop where I got my viola)
and like pokemon cards and nintendo gaming systems
and like Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” on a pink CD in a Hello Kitty radio
—that ******* of a magnolia was a distinctive taste
of the years I spent growing up in my house at the end of Wyndover Lane.

the ******* thing was almost perpetually in bloom.

it barged into both spring and autumn
(it didn’t give a **** about timing)
those pink and white spongy petals padding the ground
and at first you think it’s ******* beautiful
sitting in the crook of the trunk where it split into
                                                                two large
                                                       separate branches
tilting your chin back to catch a glimpse of blue between fat blossoms

then the petals start rotting
water-retentive little *******
and you can’t sweep ‘em away because they stick to the patio
brown clumps slipping under rubber soles
my dad lets loose a string of curses
and the magnolia shakes with laughter

I tried pressing the petals in a notebook once
while I was in that naturalist phase it seems all little girls go through
when you make fairy houses out of bark in the backyard
and put flowers between the pages of books because it feels
oh-so-much-more significant
than picking a pretty thing and showing it to mom

but the magnolia seeped through my spiral ring
and when I opened it up a month later they were dry tan papery things
not at all velveteen and rosy
and there were garish pink bloodstains all through the ten pages
on either side
magnolias don’t preserve well
except, honestly they do don’t they

then of course there’s that childhood tragedy that everyone has
when your dog got hit by some soccer mom’s suburban
or your teddy bear was lost in an airport
or maybe you just liked to cry because some things
were just really worth the tears at the time

but when I came home and found out they cut down my ******* ******* of a magnolia

I bawled

there wasn’t
even
a
stump.

It was an arbitrary day
at the arboretum
the ferns were all wondering why
a rash of rogue rhododendrons
were roughing up the azaleas
while mighty magnolias stood meekly by

A patch of tiny cyclamen giggled girlishly
while witch hazels waved green wands
and the willows wrung their hands
and wept and wept
'cause they knew what was really going on

Ch. 1.

1.

Behold, thou art dark and comely, my love;
richly hath the sun favoured thee,
delighting in thy presence.
Let me savour thy kisses of wine;
for in the gardens of the temple
the lotus furls open,
wild bees fall asleep on her face.


2.

Lilies and jasmine bloom
in the garden of my love;
falls of wisteria,
carpets of thyme.
Let us lie in the shade of the olives
to gaze on the sky.


3.

For many hours my love slept
  beneath the cedars,
couched on cool swathes of linen,
like the Lord of Midnight enthroned on a cloud.
Long tresses of willows shivered to cool his face.
I called his name but he heard me not,
being entranced in slumber,
deep in the thrall of dreams;
therefore I shall let him awaken when he please.




Ch. 2.

4.

A warm breath of nard is my master, my king,
A great golden deity haloed with stars.
Behold, the noble bearing of a king,
the finely-wrought body of a man.
In my dearest dreams he standeth before me
out of my reach, gesturing for me to follow,
calling unto me like the very embodiment of love.


5.

Night comes softly, o daughters of Jerusalem,
My king's desirous eyes have grown heavy with sleep.
His black hair ripples about his face
  like curtains of smoke,
gold bracelets entice my gaze to
the sinews of his arms.
Like roses unfurling, so open the lips of my love,
  I burn for their flavour,
yet awaken him not till he please.





Ch. 3.

6.

Out of the forest I came, with my
maidens and minions;
with carpets of hibiscus strewn at my feet.
Columns of frankincense curved into the air,
burning from lamps of copper and gold.
From the broad slopes of Edom
my soul's love stopped to observe us.
I felt his warm gaze upon me,
so soft a look as touched like caresses of hands.
I am weary with desire, my lord and king,
Bring me the looks of thine eyes, dark as midnight,
That regard me with touches of silk.


7.

Though I may stand with my legion before thee,
an army behind me,
The west wind roars to my left,
the east to my right,
a million strong with all my banners, warriors
and standard-bearers,
still my delight were only to serve thee,
see how I tremble with awe by thy side.


8.

Behold, my ladies, the noble bearing of a king,
the finely-wrought body of a man.
My king is a custodian of the sanctity of love,
see those arms with the strength to smite
yet full of the will to embrace.
Nightly cometh he to my chambers,
whispering of love,
with the stealth of a lion,
as meek as a lamb.




Ch. 4.

9.

Preparing for my beloved,
I have put on my mantle of midnight sky
garlanded with stars.
My black locks are hung with beads of gold,
my neck is anointed with sandalwood and rose.
Come, my ladies,
Bring me my white chargers,
my sedan lined with silks from Lebanon,
my heralds and cavalcades of guards;
My beloved king awaits my pleasure.






10.

When I am in the embrace of my beloved,
He is worlds of landscapes of desire,
he is all the earth, air and sky to me.
His eyes shineth as my sun and moon,
his broad chest becometh as the
cool desert dunes by night,
where I may rest my head.
Go safely in thy dreams, beloved king,
with sentinel angels, to roost with the doves.




Ch. 5.

11.

Such a turmoil of a dream
hath troubled me, my sisters,
I dreamed that my love approached my window,
Calling unto me through the
rosewood trefoils of the lattice.
Forgetful of our tryst I answered him not,
all oils and fine trappings were put away,
mine eyes were full of slumber.
When finally I rose from my bed
   he had gone.


12.

Overwrought and afraid,
I went out in the streets,
  calling unto my beloved,
receiving no answer and calling again.
  The night watchmen came and found me,
they smote me and denounced me as pagan,
calling me harlot and worshipper of false idols,
harshly they beat me with flails
and threw me into the darkest cellars
of the palace of Solomon.


13.

Awakening at last,
I felt a warm breeze,
It was my love's breath upon my face.
Let all the world suspend in time,
let hate, rage and darkness flee as a shadow,
otherwise let me die here in the arms of my king.
There is but this one hour, one place,
in one lingering moment,
When my soul's love and I are conjoined
in the petals of love.




Ch. 6.

14.

Midnight has fallen in the gardens
  of the temple of Solomon.
The moon communes with her sister in the lake,
painting the magnolias with mother-of-pearl,
turning her buds into silver doves.
Passion and beauty intertwine in my love's garden,
Like the twisted trunks of the fig trees of Judea.
Behold, my beloved,
thou art more comely even than the moon.
Come and walk with me
in the balmy air of night.


15.

Only through the love of another may
a soul come to know of itself.
My king is mine and I am his;
The sun and moon each taketh their
turn in the sky,
the shepherds go sure-footed
over their hills and valleys,
the merchants go their ways in the
spice markets of Lebanon,
while he and I are lost in one another's eyes.




Ch. 7.

16.

Love's weariness hath overcome me,
beloved lord and king.
Bring me thy pleasant fruits, thy tender words,
Lie betwixt my *******; my hair shall
be thy curtain,
these arms shall be as thy cocoon.
Let the tides cease their turning
and the winds give pause to hold their breath.
Awaken not my dearest love, until he please.


17.

Even in sleep,
such beautiful eyes hath my beloved;
his eyelashes rest upon his cheek
like the feet of a butterfly on a lily.
Come, my sisters, we shall make him
a bed of hemp and poppies,
with fruit of the lotus,
that he may languish beside me
for many days and nights.




Ch. 8.

18.

Filling my days and dreams,
here is a man with the grace of a young hart,
whose honeyed voice speaketh mantras of desire.
Arise and follow me, beloved, for my vineyards
are ripe with luscious fruits,
the doves beat their wings and fly from the cots.
Emerging from the amber of sunrise,
with a swirling of veils,
summer dances into the season of our love.


19.

Lying amid the twisting vines
My love and I are deep in each other's embrace
and his lips taste of roses heavy with dew.
I am a queen of the Red Sea,
an orchid from a sacred garden,
and my kingdom reacheth to the farthest hills.
None but my love shall pass the boundary
where my vines bear the sweetest fruit,
nor taste their heady wine.


20.

The gates of my vineyard are wrought of
iron clad with gold,
taller than cedars, decorated with
the royal insignia,
guarded by three score watchmen,
by day and night.
While other men are kept without
and the foxes are driven back by dogs,
see how swiftly they open for thee.




Ch. 9.

21.

Behold, the noble stature of a king,
the finely-wrought body of a man.
In the sanctity of love
we may walk in the realm of paradise,
undisturbed by the foibles of men.
Come beloved, awaken,
the new dawn opens as wide and fresh
as infant eyes.
Come run with me through the spice hills
  and gardens of Lebanon.

It whispers to me everyday, wide and deathly.
The heartbeat of it never fades.
The garland grows rounder and vague.

It’s like a warning, only you cannot avoid.
Where it will descend: on the dandruffed hair
Moping the pimpled cheeks? or on the

Origin of the thumps itself, losing the will to beat?
They do not speak, but their act volumes like nothing else.
The black magnolias bloom and bleed

Odours of life. Do not believe their
Scented breath. It is almost beautiful
Like ten minutes of peace.

I’m no longer afraid, my flowery enemy.
The buds sleep while monoecious parents
Mother a silent death.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

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.

You stood like
A hundred dominoes;
At the foot of my bed, like
At the foot of Vesuvius,
The permanent
Shadow puppets
You left on my walls,
Of Snow Leopards and
Yellow-Eyed Penguins, in
Wilderness,
Smelling of magnolias
And silk.  

-Jamie F. Nugent

Oh Lord, where the magnolias bloom,
In nature's sanctuary, where beauty finds room.
Amidst verdant meadows, their fragrance sways,
A tranquil haven, where peace portrays.

In the garden of grace, where blossoms thrive,
Magnolias whisper tales, keeping memories alive.
Their petals, like whispers of divine delight,
Underneath the sun's golden light.

Oh Lord, in this haven, serenity prevails,
Where magnolias dance on the wind's gentle trails.
Their blossoms, a canvas of purity and grace,
In this sacred abode, a heavenly space.

Their fragrance, a hymn in the whispering breeze,
Underneath the magnolia's sheltering trees.
In this haven, prayers find their way,

I buried an angel, on top of the hill
Under the magnolia tree
Her wings are long since silent
But she still means the world to me

The magnolia's flowers, cover her grave
Decorated in majestic white
She said the scent was Heaven's perfume
And their smell was pure delight

I was married to this angel for 41 years
Before Heaven called her away
I knew she had to leave this world
Even tho I begged her to stay

I know that my loss, is Heaven's gain
I guess they were one angel short
I know they wouldn't have taken her
Unless it was the last resort

Sometimes when I start missing her
I can't wait til the magnolias bloom
We can sit and talk for hours
While smelling their sweet perfume

She said this is as close to Heaven
As anyone could ever be
So I buried her on the hillside
Under that magnolia tree

Have become a love not forgotten,
but buried somewhere that pains your mind to find
and recollect them.

Last year when I saw those flowers
I was feeling better.
And last year when I saw those flowers,
I remember I thought I was feeling better
the last time I saw those flowers.

And it makes sad
and it ****** me off
to think that maybe next year I will look at them
and think of now
and think
things were better then.
When right now I just feel nothing.

And I don't remember feeling anything since before I even knew what a magnolia was.

These autumn sunrises bring a remnant

Of cool spring mornings we spent
In 
moments of content, encompassing silence.

What is the foundation of this feeling

You once claimed to brand me with

Inside other lips?

The truth comes out,
coated in masks,

And unknown hopes,

That we have already proved to be wrong.

Can we rewind?
Can I bring your mind

To understand the beauty of the present?

Will ghosts always follow the trace of footprints

You left when you took flight from me?

But this language of ****** magnolias dipped in salty water

Recognizes the impossibility within her pleadings.

How selfish I become with the possibility of magnificent love.

Perhaps all I do to you now is inflict pain upon the

Wary navigator who sails the ocean of your soul.

I feel the weight of your ship sink into the water well of my mind.
I let it sink into my numb mind.
This juxtaposition fills my veins with anxiety,
For all that places itself in my hands
Quickly dissipates, melting under my overbearing love
And insecure need to be fully loved.

This has led to a natural novocain,
Which I am unable to keep from filling my blood,
And infecting the dear heart within my ribs
With nothingness.

I sink into the comfortable, encompassing black
With a blank stare and shiny scars.
Reminders that this abyss,
Often leads to insomniac slicing.
Watching my own blood leak out with happiness.
Sickfully joyful to see my liveliness,
Praying the physical will call upon frozen passion.

This is the secret.
This is how I could bear to look at you for years without emotion.
Your love sang too true for my many masks to survive,
And my fear of feeling became cold, guilty friendship.
Perhaps, my guilt hoped for your understanding.
I just couldn't commit you to my own insanity.
Too many times have I tried to find fulfillment in lips,
I would never permit inside the lost water well.
You were better off without my tactless attempts at love.
Perhaps, that remains the reality…
Doubt haunts determination.
My difficulty in recovering our old language
Begins to overshadow my bright hope.

So now I contemplate the truth in my journey.
Am I merely chasing down your ghosts
Fighting to show you the value of your own love,
When you are so pridefully aware of its worth.
I wonder if you have ever truly observed my own love?

It existed, long ago, once within childhood
And then transformed into trapped, teenage hubris;
Prideful of my naivety, and what I then called fate.
But almost all evidence has been destroyed,
Out of selfish preservation.
How could I expect you to understand,
I only continue to breathe to rebel against these violent memories.

Yet, my fearful pride continuously tears at my honest ambition.
So, I call upon rhythm to release me.
Bon Iver breaks all my honor,
Evoking all memories of my ******.
Moments of time I keep deep in my silent sorrow.
Only this particular pain,
Allows me to isolate my words,
And continue singing.
I realize I have become lost in the water well.
When will this precarious ego finally shatter?

The silence returns to the mountain night.
Frigid, soft breeze breaks my blank stare,
As I fight with my twisted nature.
I continue to hold out my hand,
Shaking and trembling,
As you stare at me with shocked confusion.
I am no good with promises of the future.
So, I remain in the present,
And believe,
In the vulnerable emotion,
You unconsciously paint upon me.

Afternoon octaves from a Raspberry arbor ,
streaming with Honeybee delight , fledgeling
Cardinals hopping from branch to branch ,
Rubies pause then pose , streak away in zig-zag
flight
Bluejays crack acorns on cobblestone drives ,
Red wasp , Swallowtails and Cuckoo bees dance
in warm light , Cinnamon coated fawns dance
the forever fields of soybeans , Sugar Magnolias
stand tall in Purple clover dreams

Your white velvet soothes
When the magnolias bloom
Heat parches our lips

In the warmth of May
I look at the magnolias
And wonder when I, too,
Will bloom into something
Beautiful.

Tea time
And I sit alone
At the table
Hearing cicadas drone
Seeing roses climb the gable
Steam coming from my small mug burns
And without you here, I am now able
To focus on much bigger concerns
Like what color to paint the picket fence
Or where to place this quaint birdhouse
Or what to name the new little field mouse
That scurries outside where the magnolias bloom
right next to the headstone where the leaves are strewn

Spring in Kansas.
It doesn’t come in softly.
It roars in with the wind and rain beating against a steel roof, washing into the old soddies and stone,
Clearing out winter in one giant breath.
The change comes within a week,
From dry dead, brown, to startling green, an emerald landscape of winter wheat.  
The emerald isle has nothing on Kansas in the Spring.  
Then the color starts, red buds against glorious green fields
and thunderous skies, a painters dream uncaptured.
And forsythia, the first blooms, beautiful and stark.
Crocus, daffodil and dandelion crowning the ground with gold.
The trees, bare of leaves, burst forth with flowers in shades of white and pink and the magnolias burst forth, ready to fly off the tree.
Our mighty cotton wood, drooping with frills that will become light catching tufts in the early summer sun as the leaves murmur their constant song, piling like snow in the heated streets.
Thunder rolls as lightning strike turning day into night with hail filled clouds and twisters striking like Greek gods, angry and awesome.
Creeks flood and clear the way for tadpoles and crawdads in streams and pools.
Spring comes, the earth warms, we all wake and stretch and wait for the sunflowers to do the same, yearning to the summer sun.

Amethyst and evaporating
Counting down the seven days before
I disappear again;
Dissolve into a shooting star
And lose myself along the fractured horizon
Bleeding white tea
Drowning in debt and memory
Elegant, apathetic, re-shattered
Remembering.

I pull the summer back up over my face
Like white sheets so quietly in the morning
Sunlight streams in
The beams crosshatch our scavenged posters and prints
The home we built ourselves
Slowly etherized, erased
Reduced to amethyst and onward.

Stretch out the time and I will spend it gladly
Budgeted and rationed beautifully
One year boils down to seven days
And here is how I count them out:
Sitting on couches wrapped up in rainbow blankets,
Throw pillows
I chart these days on a map;
Meticulous.
One by one they follow each other in perfect order
Like stupid wandering sheep
Progressive
Blinded and bleating ****** ******
Numbered, they lull me to sleep
Sweet seven of them

These days I count in wine glasses
I count them in hours and smiles and tears
Every second of my battered year
Counted like clouds on the spring lilac sky-scape
Days counted down in popcorn kernels and ice cream cones
In laughlines and scars, in lavender scones
And showers and trips to the gym and dishes in the sink
I count my days in vanilla candles and scratched records
And papers and poems and midterms and paintings
Polaroid photos and the deep breaths we take between moments
I counted every moment
But now it’s amethyst and over.

Purple like the city skyline in the spring sunset light
Jasmine, indigo, magenta
And you and I
Our apartment
White walls we plastered in memory
All the homes I never had blurred together
Filtered through this glass prism
And projected in progression
Here is violet
Here is vanishing rapidly
With what velocity the end races towards us
Another melting mauve goodbye to add to my resume of heartbreaks
Strong scent of hot magnolias
We lay maudlin in burgundy wine
And purple rain.
I sit hurting how I always do
Mourning like death’s an opportunity
Mourning like I’ve already moved on
How it cuts me to go
How it’d break me to stay
This amethyst year so sharp and sparkling
It scraped and stained me
Left me shades of purple like our night sky shining
With constellations overlapping
Loved and loathed in suffocating lavender limelight
The winds whisper only of how I adore you all
I so adore you.
This is who I am for seven days
And just only seven
Here we are gemstones,
Dissipating salty starmatter
Fleeting amethyst crystals
Evaporating into oblivion.

The leaves will soon turn
shades of auburn
for the twenty fourth time
in my life.
Darkness descends earlier now
than it did only a week ago.
I understand autumn
but I do not find comfort in that.
Some days you can feel her
clinging desperately
to the warmth of the sun
but she was not granted
that power.

The days roll on
and slowly her grip is gone.
Death prevails through the lands
planting frost where life once grew.
The birds don't quite sing like they used to.

But earth read the book of living
and knows when the magnolias must bloom.
I sit with her, my mother earth,
in hope she will one day
impart me her wisdom.
For I cling desperately to the sunshine
when I am blessed its presence,
but I too was not granted that power.
I know no winter,
only the storms of Jupiter
and I fear one day he will take me
before I learn
when my magnolias must bloom.

What be more grandiose than poetry,

     expound at your own discretion,

   bottle sunshine, save it in a jar,

    tie an affectionate knot, spread it around

     flood desert mirages with flowing spirits,

speaks kindly and murderously about love,

  can tempt winds to uncoil temptation's gist

****** upon or written asunder desperation

    relentless in its seizing of human behavior,

magnifying moonbeams or star's decimation

    perfumed magnolias to winter's cruelty,

  call of the wild midst sweetness of fresh rhubarb pie,

infinitely vast in its incalculable grasp of predication,

  beyond limitless infrastructures 'neath fancied significance