"magnolias" poems
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.
May 2, 2013
May 2, 2013 at 4:48 PM UTC
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
May 14, 2018
May 14, 2018 at 1:19 PM UTC
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.
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 3:44 PM UTC
*By no means is this my work, I’m highlighting this in celebration for Black History Month
————————————————————————-——
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to ****
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
-Abel Meeropol
Feb 2, 2021
Feb 2, 2021 at 11:34 AM UTC
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 forty-one years
Before Heaven called her away
I knew she had to leave this world
Even though 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 away
Unless it was their 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 that hillside
Underneath the magnolia tree
Nov 2, 2012
Nov 2, 2012 at 2:32 PM 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
"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.
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 10:31 PM UTC
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
Apr 28, 2010
Apr 28, 2010 at 4:18 PM UTC
~for Verlie Burroughs, a ‘fellow’ islander poet with a sense of human humor~
walking the reservoir on a warm spring day,
Central Park littered with tourists and pale face,
fellow islanders, all of non-Algonquin Indian descent
released from Rikers Island (of course) Prison,
six month sentence served
behind bars of winter grayscale skies
and snowy steel and grey prison everything
an out-of-townsfolk young lady passes me in a pink t-shirt,
where humans these lazy days declare their entire philosophy,
“I’d rather live on an island”
and thus a poem commissioned
well, rather brought forth from the chilled, deep waters surrounding the brain where winter vegetables rooted but cannot surface,
the iced ground frozen impermitting bodies to be buried,
no war and death monument foundations to be poured,
flower-powered poems unable to pierce as well,
even with the upwards ****** of cesarean birth
and or, one last push and me begging
breathe
winter strangled
but I walked today
the Central Park reservoir and
all I got was that stupid t-shirt provocation
with
tulips and daffodils, dogwood and magnolias, and
cherry blossoms confirming,
it’s okay today to write of
islands and shoreline once more,
of
boundaries now and again
though the idea had prior brief transversed
the thought canal, was struck into action
when realized suddenly a dawning -
a l l m y l i f e, I h a v e l i v e d o n a n i s l a n d
counting backwards seven decades with a
collegial exception, of living by a great lake,
which is but an island in reverse,
poet *** prophet had to always walk on water to get home
<•>
my poems are travelogues,
not pretty words and tonguing talk,
sorry not,
more tales than wagging tongue wordy tails
but dumbstruck by the ocean notion that I live by the
grace of an Ocean that waits patiently to reclaim my island,
stealing my unborn poem children and
tried with a Sandy haired girl a few years ago
hurry home to scribe, and imbibe,
write upon its streetscape
with colored chalk and
upon it once more,
the concrete paths and
a reservoir dirt path surrounding and shorelines
that are all the shaping of me
all my life, and Neverland realized
I am a seagull disguised as human*
Apr 16, 2018
Apr 16, 2018 at 11:25 PM UTC
*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*
May 7, 2016
May 7, 2016 at 2:43 PM UTC
Your white velvet soothes
When the magnolias bloom
Heat parches our lips
Apr 12, 2015
Apr 12, 2015 at 7:23 PM UTC
In the warmth of May
I look at the magnolias
And wonder when I, too,
Will bloom into something
Beautiful.
Feb 28, 2013
Feb 28, 2013 at 4:37 PM UTC
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
Mar 17, 2012
Mar 17, 2012 at 10:07 PM UTC
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.
May 13, 2010
May 13, 2010 at 11:26 AM UTC
one by one
they are pressing the button for more
I nod and
talk to them with my mouth shut
(my mouth is full of popcorn and wisdom)
I tell them to walk through fire with grace
save your words and
bring me an edelweiss - my eyebrow says
show me how you catch a ray
your bullets are buried in the snow above me
stop shooting blue birds
they’re made of plastic and
no thunder can save you
now and then
my cave is filled with the helium of silence
there you may take me hostage
while you dunk your biscuits in a cup of peace
magnolias grow without asking questions
do you think my big stick is a silly-Billy
or God is wearing white socks?
Mar 28, 2014
Mar 28, 2014 at 9:31 AM UTC
Abandoned admiration calloused with despair
A bottomless compass that leads nowhere
Impotent illusions that curse the starless storm
A revengeful wind swells undersea
Tracing underneath the sunlight
Beyond the aches of fingers
With handfuls of garden walls
Fragility that huddles impatiently
As the ivory magnolias flicker in the decay
Stains of the stagnant obscenities
As the nest of bones grieve
Crawling distances daring the dark
Outside the landmarks
We sneak into the tunnels
As a sheath of pungent amniotic poetry is found
Shattering as the sorrows erode
The appalling cracks stretching my skin
Theatrical anorexic anchors that pierce my flesh
With abandoned ******* and stinging hurt
The nakedness shrieks
With an intolerable shame
If I descend much deeper I will burst
I'll float through the cemetery because I'm already dead
The delirium has me caged
Jul 26, 2013
Jul 26, 2013 at 10:03 PM UTC
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.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 6:57 AM UTC
*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*
Jun 25, 2015
Jun 25, 2015 at 3:03 PM UTC
in afternoons i drive through tolls and
smash chicken with a tenderizer, spoon
fed and clean. this isn’t
thailand tropics, not on a scuba dive.
writing’s old, rusty, sick, but ‘oh i
wake and reach out.’
now i live in boston, my sheets smell of
flowers, night bodies, your breath. even when
my frame folds into your side- and you push-
it’s not away, it’s ok. i can fog glasses with my
fingers. i can say hello, goodbye.
once, i combed hair off bath tile(not my own),
searched a loft for reasons to leave
there had to be something, someone
else (you). and now, i’ve stopped—
we watch puppies, magnolias, moon rising
in the park. i fall asleep to a podcast. i smile
in the dark.
May 7, 2013
May 7, 2013 at 1:09 PM UTC
Sing me a thrush, bone.
Sing me a nest of cup and pestle.
Sing me a sweetbread fr an old grandfather.
Sing me a foot and a doorknob, for you are my love.
Oh sing, bone bag man, sing.
Your head is what I remember that Augusty
you were in love with another woman but
taht didn't matter. I was the gury of your
bones, your fingers long and nubby, your
forehead a beacon, bare as marble and I worried
you like an odor because you had not quite forgotten,
bone bag man, garlic in the North End,
the book you dedicated, naked as a fish,
naked as someone drowning into his own mouth.
I wonder, Mr. Bone man, what you're thinking
of your fury now, gone sour as a sinking whale,
crawling up the alphabet on her own bones.
Am I in your ear still singing songs in the rain,
me of the death rattle, me of the magnolias,
me of the sawdust tavern at the city's edge.
Women have lovely bones, arms, neck, thigh
and I admire them also, but your bones
supersede loveliness. They are the tough
ones that get broken and reset. I just can't
answer for you, only for your bones,
round rulers, round nudgers, round poles,
numb nubkins, the sword of sugar.
I feel the skull, Mr. Skeleton, living its
own life in its own skin.
1.7k
What you don’t know is
that I don’t know either.
What makes you stay inside on sunny days
has pestered me as well my whole life.
Shadows of things that would never happen
grew ominous, loomed over my cowering heart
so being a defensive, obsessive ruminator
my hope to make the leaves in my yard
stand still against gusts of wind –
become a psychotherapist
a posturing senex
trailing his wounded child behind
all made OK
with a license to insult you
pretending I know something
you don’t.
Will global warming disappear (?)
just because I know thousands of facts
about worms after rain
about how so many weeds pop up
in freshly-rained soil
underneath even dominating magnolias
and you pay me
to wizen you.
You stare like a mesmerized gazelle
counting the lions
a whole dozen of them
drawing a circle around your life in tall grass.
I want to tell you
run from the need for a resting place
from the pointless mobius strip
of therapy’s semantic banter.
I wish you would tell me
to just be quiet for once
invite me to hike a trail
protected by angels
with just so much sun
enough rain to nurture
and the lions yes
the lions like Fu Dogs
guard the entry to the hills.
I always forget
it isn’t my frustrated reverie
my angst about knowing
how important it is
not to need to know anything
this constant inability
not to daydream
that brought you here
to a leather throne
with an Olympus digital recorder
so you can capture every
single
word.
Feb 26, 2012
Feb 26, 2012 at 9:25 AM UTC
When the dunes turn to jazz
And the grains dazzle in the moonlight
The scorpio circle mating-dance
No straight paths
For a desert snake
No chance for a fragile man.
No refuge for the Citizens of Eden
Newton's hand would deter The Fall
Intercept gravity's apple
And the ceilings of the world
Would be far lower.
The earth is the ocean oasis
Panoramic, oceanic, vast
The desert dunes of space expands
The wood bends; the paper folds;
Objects collide; the tempest storms
And whips the sand.
The dunes turn to jazz
The Mystic Rose and the Magnolias dance
The desert hand expands, expands, expands
Raw power.
The Dunes Turn to Jazz
And the humans cower.
Aug 31, 2014
Aug 31, 2014 at 2:56 PM UTC
My heart feels ache
For souls I hardly knew
Our boundaries we had to break
In order to see our hearts grew
Into orchards of Cherry Blossoms
Never have we before taken this journey
To have the chance to cut through
The social stigma our lands placed
On a country know for the power of its army
Regardless of the Problems
We Faced
Our adventure knew pure excitement
and Serenity
Even in our darkest hour
Many were surprised I was one of enlightenment
Which only makes the essence of my identity
Much deeper
This power
We feel sheds tears
To Allow for Magnolias to Grow and Wave
For a Chinese Goodbye
In hopes we meet again
When the tree has grow
Apr 2, 2015
Apr 2, 2015 at 1:35 AM UTC