"perennials" poems
Snow falling
the bear snoozing
sunflowers stalling
A Sunflower blooming
The Sun is blinding
Sunflowers blooming
Mating calls for fighting
a sunflower glooming
Perennials rebloom
as a sunflower tries to
Sunflowers rebloom
a sunflower dies too
The snowflakes fall
a Sunflower grows tall
sunflowers wilt
the dens are built
Snow falling
The bear snoozing
sunflowers stalling
A Sunflower glooming
Sep 2, 2018
Sep 2, 2018 at 4:51 PM UTC
The urgent care is the nursery
Where I choose my seeds with thought.
The doctor is the gardener
Who knows how to fix what I’ve wrought.
She sows the seeds inside my skin,
Yet not with a trowel or ***
She uses a needle and surgical thread,
With budding knots lined up in a row.
Then she leaves me with my tidy ground
And some knowledge on how I should care
For the lined up plot she’s left to me,
Whose potential I’m required to bear.
The deep rivet I slashed into my skin
Is where the seedlings take root.
The blood from my veins keeps them moist
As the new blossoms stand resolute.
But when the weather grows dark and dreary,
My sprouts need cover from the cold.
So I bundle them up with jeans and sweats
To protect them and let them take hold.
But despite the layers I pile atop,
The small spiny blooms poke through.
I run my fingers back and forth,
And marvel at how fast they grew.
Then after they’ve grown for fourteen days,
I return to the nursery at last.
The gardener plucks and prunes and picks
‘Til the wounds and the blooms come to pass.
So now the perennials have passed us by,
And the sprouts have been taken to bin.
The wound that watered my seedlings’ through,
Has left but a scar on my skin.
Jan 23, 2022
Jan 23, 2022 at 11:20 AM UTC
I'd never cared for flowers
Symbols of affection that wilt
And forget memories
And fall apart in kitchens and bedrooms and strew their pieces on the floors
Dried and broken after only days of being lovely
Flowers with their alternating patterns of
Unreliable determinations
Claiming every other petal as an opposite declaration
Of a determination
Of love
And I never liked removing thorns from roses
Because they added something truthful and
Poetic
But when you gave me flowers
I held them to my heart and let my eyes dance across the kaleidoscope that they created in a glass vase
I let them live for longer than they did
Because they were still pretty even when no one else seemed to think so
And when they hang dried on a wall
Still colorful but slightly brittle
Maybe they'll stay like that if I just don't touch them
When you gave me flowers
I plucked off every other petal
Into a bouquet of He-Loves-Me
Because for once there was no doubt
For once I believed the sentiment in the flowers and the words from your lips as you handed them over
The lack of nots in the petals
Pulling apart the knots in my stomach
He loves me
He loves me
Truer than the dirt that holds
Wilting symbols of affection
Sweeter than the honey
Of their pollinators
He loves me
He loves me
A garden of something new and beautiful
Perennial and built on symbolism after all
Until you let me know that dead flowers were just dead flowers
That they were past their worth
And metaphors aren't worth the dirt they were grown in
That perennials can't return
When you've salted the soil
And brittle flowers on the wall should always be removed
But I always lived in metaphors anyway
And I had a new appreciation for flowers that I didn't want to lose
I was no longer a rose
But a thorn
I always thought smooth stems were so boring
Not to mention dishonest
But I didn't want to make you bleed
So painfully I dug an olive branch from my rib cage
Then realizing that a ****** token may not be so well received
I decorated it with a bouquet of blue Forget-Me-Nots
But you plucked off every other petal
And handed back an array of He-Loves-Me-Nots
He loves me not
And there was no doubt in the sentiment
The sentience of metaphors dying all around me
When all I know is metaphors
And flowers were never just flowers
And words were never just words
But both are found on gravestones and poems and apologies
And parallels have fallen into nice and even spacing
Reducing flowers to clichés
Of alternating promises
Of He loves me and
He loves me not
Of broken promises
He loves me
Not
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 6:04 PM UTC
Take me to the Rookery with its many paths
A tea house selling refreshments in pretty glass
Three striped lollies covered in chocolate beads
Biscuits and sandwich are all that we need.
The garden was set out, in brick oblong beds
Raised from the ground and divided by hedge
Many bush roses, of the older kind, smelling of
Cold cream and sweet camomile.
There was a terrace with steps leading down
To a sunken garden where the roses reclined
Hanging over arbours, pink , white and cream
And other perennials added to the scene.
This place a haven at the top of Streatham hill
Does anybody know it, it might be there still?
My daddy took me often on a Sunday afternoon
To ramble in the sunshine, and play at my will.
Love Mary x
Jun 15, 2018
Jun 15, 2018 at 8:02 AM UTC
Sometimes I think myself clever,
a genius in horticulture,
harvesting perpetual fleeting moments.
A muted gardener.
Watering without promise or
sentiment.
When the air grows stale
I can disappear
(I always have),
like so many ghosts
or smoke
A nomadic farmer.
But today
I want to be
old and knotted roots.
stationary and permanent,
nourishing and timeless,
impervious to elements
so that she
might flourish.
I want to lean hard into the wind,
sway with it and
bend
while holding my
only purchase.
And when she opens up
it will be enough
and maybe for the first time
neither of us
will be
murderers of perennials.
Nov 25, 2011
Nov 25, 2011 at 10:13 AM UTC
Sleep among the sunflowers
Gaze at the felicity of raining stars
Ages & angels pass by you
Like perennials in the park
Nov 7, 2013
Nov 7, 2013 at 1:38 AM UTC
I am no gardener, but I do know this:
Perennials and orchards need the kiss
Of an early frost, a freezing deep,
To hold them whole through winter’s keep
A bloom in false spring, (winter’s hollow),
Before the heavy snows that follow,
Will have the cell walls bursting, cracking,
Freezing, thawing, expanding, contracting.
So too, must dreams lay dormant still,
Or else becoming Winterkill.
Much as I wish them to bloom, bloom now,
They must lay under the mulch and bough.
I tell myself, “Learn what you can from the season”
Patience, Myopia, Acceptance sans reason -
You are stuck in the wheel, right here and right now,
Hearing naught in the dark, muffled underground.
Yet I am no seedling! I am no tree!
Though my flesh warms and cools just as easily.
So why should I wait? Why be pinned by the cold?
Do I have a choice in the story that’s told?
Could I be a cold crocodile, nose above ice,
Or hibernate warm with the marmots and mice?
Why not come in from the outside to thaw,
And savor small tidbits of hope in my maw?
Could I choose to fly south, or to stay evergreen?
Must I really wait for the melt to be seen?
I wonder, though I’m sure from what seed I have come,
Is it winter that dictates what I will become?
Feb 26, 2019
Feb 26, 2019 at 10:57 PM UTC
Lines of light
form our forms,
as shapes glance shyly
at spot-dotted stars.
They shape you, you know?
Framing your eyes
with lashes so dark,
petals,
against a backdrop of lime
clear, wide, citrus,
for me, the slicing sting
in open wound screams.
But for you?
My arms wide
to gaily catch green gaze
whole.
My gaze,
a lens sans focus,
light bends and blurs
to bokeh.
It’s lost.
It returns.
The sudden impact
of complete regression,
dynamically hastened exhales
in symphonies of near silence.
Faith in finding
new seedlings buried
below cold spring surface,
or, if-luck-might-root-hold,
flowering perennials
of Love without Lust
claw up through dirt.
Worn out and in,
like rugged denim blue,
spanning one lifetime,
two,
yours and mine.
Endless desire,
for wear,
for comfort without fear,
each year, new tears,
again.
Again, again,
sun me with your stare.
Aug 10, 2012
Aug 10, 2012 at 4:59 AM UTC
soft-bodied succulents
dutifully separating the perennials
organization crisis, preservative induced
chemically altered worldview
shaped largely by food reconstructed
and the public’s inability to unite against imperialism –
daily newscasts give rise to propaganda
water-cooler hype fest
breaking information
leading with bleeding
enveloping the country in irrational fear
unsafe, even with children
constant threat from every direction
insanity has become the home
of Ward and June Cleaver –
glowing exhaust pipe
as all roads lead back
beginnings resemble endings
all things circular
revolving Revolutionary revolted
remembers regurgitating rancid raspberries
aluminum spray from the sky
coated pesticide residue from below
only the hate left is organic
and pure –
immeasurable, time slides away
plastic incorporated into new organisms
freshly evolved bacteria eat the remains
of humanity and its greatness
traceless epoch forever eroded
undiscovered pockets of micro cilium
dine on the fat reserves
stored in the soil
like oil –
returning gods survey creation version Earth
emotionless and stationary
the process is repeated
as it has been for billions of years
single manipulation
recoding the genetic structure
life begins this journey
one more time –
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 12:43 PM UTC
Serpent flails; shallow water.
Joker smiles; never speaks.
On top of the mountain,
Hands grasping each other,
One behind our backs.
Gazing into the jokers eyes
The serpent clenches the hand behind his back.
His last defense.
Pulsating blood; pushed through uneasy veins,
Sideways glances,
Grips tightening,
Eyes locking,Tongues melting.
Our goodbyes; easy.
One dagger.
One rose.
Covered in a single tear of crimson.
Perennials:
Never to be given away to a serpent.
Dagger concealed behind him.
Once a voluptuous rose,
Left now to die, decay.
Blade:
Rose,
Fell,
A tear from the only one left laughing
Jan 4, 2014
Jan 4, 2014 at 7:05 PM UTC
i am not your blooming flower
i don't belong in your
garden kingdom populated
by perennials and ruled by
thorn stemmed rose bushes
where you go
to seek solace and discover
the bursting lightness of
that sensuous pain when
blood erupts from that
thin line where
the white fatty layer threatens
to spill out into the world
and stain your white carnations.
and i never promised you
that it would be pretty
and that one day you would be
able to look at those sensationless slices
and see more than just
an act of scarification
that i asked for
that i endured
but the physical embodiment of
that internal scream that
bounces off the sides of my chest
and shatters the crystalline lattice
that protects my dispassionate heart
from your touch
as soft as the downy feathers
of the spring's children
emerging from their
incubator eggs to
greet the world where they
will fall before they fly
and i will impale myself on
the pyre of their sacrifice.
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 3:22 PM UTC
Leaves of brown, petals unwound
I shrivel in your awkward shadow.
Had to pluck your roots, snap your stems.
Drown you out with dirt, and other seeds.
But somehow, you spring up again.
Desperately ugly and undead.
Even Earth had to regurgitate
That unsightly, darkened head.
Stubborn smog won't turn to vapor,
Not even seasons wilt your verdure.
Rivalries rage, with out any shame.
What has been done, remains.
Apr 5, 2011
Apr 5, 2011 at 8:18 PM UTC
that the trending tags,
for but a single day,
banished the perennials,
all celebrated the occasion
with a rousing wake and
an indecent burial
out **** spots,
sad, pain, heartbreak and depression,
in the closet, once a year, annual,
as for death,
it's ugly head,
cutoff, spiked and disliked,
in the tower displayed
for twenty four, de minimus,
on a day mutual selected,
we compose only
of the beauty, and the kindness
in each and all of us
Jan 7, 2015
Jan 7, 2015 at 5:03 PM UTC
When I planted those flowers
And grew them for you
I never thought of what you’d do
Perennials they were, with gorgeous hues
But you took them and cut them out of the blue
Stuck them in a vase for everyone to see
Watered them lightly until they wilted
And want faded away
Those flowers
To me
We’re me and you
The love that we grew
Cherished and knew
And at the first sign of beauty
You snatched them right up
New blossoms could not bloom
For you came in on cue
Withered and wrinkled
Discarded and dry
Colors all lost
Beauty long squashed
We were flowers in bloom
And we will bloom again
But the ugly remainder
Of what was and will be
Will always lay there
In the trash
Apr 3, 2022
Apr 3, 2022 at 6:55 PM UTC
The sun was just about to set
when I happened on the scene:
A small and well kept garden
scented with Magnolia trees.
Someone had placed a wooden bench
beside a whispering pond.
I never knew this gem was here
In New York, most green is gone.
There were seasonals and perennials
competing for my senses.
A most welcome distraction
from my dark and somber penses.
So little time remained before
the light would fade away
and their beauty and their brilliance
would be shadowed, dark ,and grey.
I thought about my childhood home
and the fruit trees that once grew there.
of the flowers and the vegetables
cultivated with my parents' care.
Concrete now covers every inch
of my remembered home.
They put a housing project
where, upon a time, I roamed.
I felt a sudden pang of loss,
fought back a foolish tear.
Here, in another's garden,
I had travelled back the years.
Jul 14, 2012
Jul 14, 2012 at 5:26 PM UTC
carefully I cradled the garden seeds
depositing them in the incubating
warmth of the earth's black womb
then buried my heavy heart there for a season
I thought of my cousin Roger who had just
relinquished the magical breath that animates
all living beings in this universe
it didn't matter that he had abused his body and
was an emotional wreck most of his brief life
more like a brother, fond memories of innocent play,
mischievous fun and a generous, loving persona
poked through fresh and green
like tender infant shoots
these were the perennials, the lasting bouquets
that could never be laid to rest
the fluffy double orange hoop skirts of the hibiscus
dancing in the corner
and the African daisies laughing purple faces
make me smile
I could feel my cousin's Spirit whispering in
the gentle Florida breeze
"hey, cuz, life goes on.......forever!"
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 10:49 AM UTC
"I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then I ate my own wickedness."
- Aldous Huxley
i let my head hit the brachiaria.
cyan sky rolled past,
and it seemed to me as if
my past itself was dragged out of my body,
excorcised and pulled up
and traveled with the sky's current
the sky is moving,
impossible and slow.
the clouds jog with a rush.
sometimes i think i have never
felt at all
with my year ****** up,
on their way to Mongolia or
Philadelphia,
I tried to desperately recall
sullied at the thought i couldnt.
I thought about how i always embarrassed you
in public
how i'd turned into an embarrassment
at this point in time
my pure innocence
that flowed in the past gently
uncomfortably shifting and
wondering how certain things felt
i don't know
manhood devoured me like
an apple.
in the garden
i walked
tried to spot all the perennials
and i did
and i thanked mankind for taking up the
habit of finding wild plants
bringing them into our lives
i see a sign, the museum is holding an exhibit on
british pastorals and hellscapes
i tell her we should go.
she agrees
walks across the street to buy a wire.
my blood ran down my body
onto the linen
Egyptian cotton
like the princesses who
married at 14,
at 13 i laughed
when they asked me to go the square
and at 15 i felt it my responsibility.
the fetid collapse of my
sincerity and my serenity
flowed through my being
patrolled round
my purity like
a culpable
sentry
i closed my eyes
and i felt the sheets heavy with
plasma
i blinked and
everything turned to burgundy
the subway grates licked at my ankles
the poplar and elms
in firestone
laughed at me,
who had so eagerly
held on to a fray
consumed by mankind
gutted with
certain
toxicant.
Mar 21, 2016
Mar 21, 2016 at 12:55 PM UTC
What are you doing? I’ve been up all night listening to the earth moving,
I’ve toiled through the day without your light to illumine
And I wonder, what are you doing?
*You’ve not known even half this night,
It only feels so because it's burned on so long
And the days only feel darker because of my tempest turning strong
And you’re right-
Preparing day and night,
embalming my body with every chemical I can find
Carving and crafting a crypt for my mind.
Ending this torture, heavy,
A man in his mortuary
ready to waste this winding sheet
And feel the earth beneath my feet.*
Love, what do you mean?
You’re right in front of me, I could reach out and touch you
Or couldn’t I touch you, only a ghost of my dreams?
*No, dearest.
Between this cold and you, it was the cold that was nearest.
Your love could not yet try to interfere it,
I could hear it.
A whisper calling me forth,
It's time I bury whats broken, redeem my worth,
And build myself new.
But to do so, is to do so without you.*
So a ghost not yet, but a ghost to become.
Widowing beside your tomb
Wanting to exhume you
But the better part of me will let you rest
As long as the flowers held against your chest are perennials.
Mar 21, 2016
Mar 21, 2016 at 1:23 AM UTC
I am
Moon-drift, wreathed among shadowed shrouds,
Lain in grasses woven with scented perennials,
Scattered
To the winds of rapture,
My sigh
Drifting in ephemeral mists, lost in the midnight silk....
I am
The hush of an everlasting kiss
Remembering;
Skin vulnerable to breeze cradling a fragile heart,
Wrapped
Melting into emerald realms....
I am
Flesh-touch, scorched in the blaze of wildness,
Trembling;
In the breath and lathe upon waiting skin,
Surrendered;
Burnt in the shimmer-gleam of crimson stain....
I am
Unabashed sensual delight,
Primal;
Shimmering in the haze of heat,
Enraptured
In the drown of his tether....
I am
The taste of your flesh on lips
Untamed;
Fevered, in veins that are lost,
Embraced,
As the moon dreams high in darkened silk....
I am
Each suckle of skin burgeoned and pliant,
Whimpering;
Curved, etched wanton,
Drifting
Salacious in sweet release....
I am
Your heart
Curled under my breast,
Immortalized
Adorned in glistening mists of tender-soft
The lover that never leaves.......
Jul 30, 2012
Jul 30, 2012 at 6:36 AM UTC
ONE IS TO PICK UP THE OPEN PAPERS ON THE FLOOR,
SHOWING EVENTS WHICH HAPPENED ONCE BEFORE,
TWO IS TO LISTEN AND POINT OUT HERE AND THERE,
THE THINGS I MISSED WHEN I COULD ONLY STAND AND STARE,
THREE IS FOR COMPANY AND JUST TO MAKE ME LAUGH,
I CAN NOT STOP, YOUR FACE, ONE VOICE, MY PATH,
FOUR IS SPECIAL, UNRELENTING WITH RARE TALENT,
HOW I MISSED YOU GONE WHEN YOU FINALLY WENT,
FIVE IS QUIRKY JUST LIKE ME BUT THERE'S ONLY ONE
SPACE AND SOMEHOW WE BOTH WRIGGLE INTO IT TOGETHER,
SIX IS THE MECHANIC WHO USUALLY GETS THINGS DONE,
ONE OF THOSE PERENNIALS YOU CAN REALLY DEPEND ON,
SEVEN IS TO LOVE AND GUIDE ME ON MY WAY,
GIVE ME MAGIC JUST LIKE HONEY SO THEY SAY.
Mar 9, 2016
Mar 9, 2016 at 4:10 PM UTC
chasing the boulder.
having looked before,
i looked again on my way,
past the laundry cottage
on the bend.
low tide indeed, no
**** up with the tide, sand
showing.
back along, slow and glance,
see the thing, reverse return.
standing proud, the wooden boulder,
david nash sculpture. me in dancing shoes,
the river bank deep mud.
i had to photograph it.
quite badly from a distance.
i will go again.
i liked the montbretia.
sbm.
** notes ( i have not written notes a while )
Montbretia
Crocosmia is a small genus of flowering plants in the iris family, Iridaceae. It is native to the grasslands of the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. They can be evergreen or deciduous perennials that grow from basal underground corms.
**extra note
David Nash is known for works in wood and shaping living trees. His large wood sculptures are sometimes carved or partially burned to produce blackening. His main tools for these sculptures are a chainsaw and an axe to carve the wood and a blowtorch to char the wood.
Oct 2, 2013
Oct 2, 2013 at 12:26 AM UTC
For a time I wrote poems on the subway
my eyes were bright and green
I grinned and spoke in crystal tongue
and wrote what little I'd seen
I didn't see what I thought I saw
as the seed sees not the ground
but perennials in summer fields
will watch the bloomers assume
that photos keep their colour
when instead they leave no room
for pictures on a dreaming wall
lifted out of you
now I sit writing poems on the subway
a duller shade of blue.
Dec 5, 2019
Dec 5, 2019 at 4:15 PM UTC
Gentle rain storms heighten
the scent of lilac bushes lining the fence
anticipating perennials
lively from the dampness and the sun
when days stay dry
carrying a bucket of water in one hand
walking barefoot to hydrate them
meanwhile
sunshine fruits
are being morphed into juice
behind the silk curtains
I see the wrinkled hands
firmly holding fruit peels
covered in shiny liquid
rays focus on her hands just right
this view
dripping
in citrine shades.
Apr 26, 2020
Apr 26, 2020 at 3:36 PM UTC
what i would tell you about the posies
that gather around
when they overhear my voice
calling out your name,
none would say the same.
for them,
caroused near the streams
that few perennials are but discerned;
springtime only passes by,
and then they are gone.
but how are they able to suss as such?
when these rosebuds
unlatch themselves
only when you are here?
Apr 15, 2020
Apr 15, 2020 at 1:33 PM UTC