1.
I am a dandelion.
Damned weed!
My beauty is ordinary,
ubiquitous, undesired.
I thrive on busy roadsides,
around and between
vacant lot rubble, in
broken back sidewalk cracks.
I am squeezed into wine
where thin skinned grapes fail.
I am a child’s toy,
wishes cast on feathery seed
and sown on the wind.
I am playful sibling denial
and decapitation, Momma had a baby
and its head popped off.
I am bitter greens, butter,
vinegar, mustard on plates
of poverty and immigration.
I am an annoyance in proper places
attacked with spinning blades,
poison, spades and bare ripping fists.
2.
You are an orchid.
Your beauty is exotic,
rare and treasured.
You are seized from wild palaces, fens of isolation.
You are cultivated,
propagated by caring hands beneath
conservatory glass.
You incite mania, desperation,
moral transgressions, murder.
You intoxicate without yeast and sugar.
You will never join with common vinegar or worn fork.
You are a delicate, singular specie.
3.
The floral beauty and
the tenacious weedy beast.
O impossible cross pollination!
O the onerous, resilient, odd children!
Might not the world destroy them
with boot heels of marketing,
automatic silk and
plastic consumerism?
My vacant lots have already succumbed to
vinyl condominiums. The weekly
poison dose is taking hold.
While your palatial fens fall to saws
held, smoking, screaming
lumber, soy and beef.
Where is our exile?
Flowers do not find root in lunar craters.
We’ll have to resort to barricades. Board
the windows and doors with love and poetry.
We’ll die with melting, empty rifles and fists.
We’ll be despised and wildly admired.
We’ll be dead winter flowers unaffected
by the new Spring.
We’ll be dead, dragged to curbs
readied for rough, unknowing hands.
We’ll be dead.
4.
The dead man said,
“The day started out…
with normal showers,
and cobwebs of sleep.”
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THE MIND ATTIC 