💐Poetry Garden💐

The Russian Ballet Book

I remember when I found the book at an old store

It was bound in green cloth and smelled of dust and ancient glue

I bought it for fifty cents

I was hungry for the understanding of things unknown

And you found me looking at it

Sitting on a log with my dirty feet near the fire to stay warm

You laughed because the book did not belong here

Amongst the pine trees, the aspens and our ignorance

So I took my book to my tent and read it by flashlight

As I read I secretly began dancing in the unknown

My world grew beyond the woods and the mountains

I wished to share my understanding with you

But your laughter was still ringing in my ears

So I spoke of the book with the trees and the river

And they kept my secrets

So I could keep pretending that I was like you

The Blue Carnation

I gathered my bruised knees to my boney chest,

And stared at a single blue carnation sitting in a plastic cup.

The flower’s natural sweetness had been contorted with dyes.

A fair flower made ugly by the wishes and whims of some fool.

Suddenly it all made sense.

You had made me cry again with your ‘well intentioned’ remarks.

“So uneducated,” you’d say “If you are not skinny and pretty, well then….”

Always measuring my value by the width of my thighs and waist,

So that I began to hate things that I once loved about myself.

I pursued skin and bones, starving my body and spirit,

And I cried while I dug a grave for my brilliance and light to go in.

You had not enough back bone to simply ask for my allegiance,

So you brought me a blue flower in hopes that it would buy me,

And keep me minding your wishes and whims.

Ironic isn’t it brother?

Every time I pass a blue carnation I remember the day

I sat staring at a gift you made to keep me under your boot.

I broke free instead.

That was the day I washed off your ugly colors and finally started eating again.

The Woods

I stood at the edge of the woods that I had known as a child

Seeking shelter amongst the great strong pines again

Under the boughs of such old friends I have never felt alone

Yet as I drew closer I could see clearly that the trees had grown apart

No longer leaning their limber heads upon each other

Their weariness found no safe resting place upon the shoulders of understanding

No longer gathering strength from their closeness and roots

They had grown independent and isolated and weak

Without their tent of branches the sun scorched the seedlings and dried up the fern

Their stubbornness made them brittle and the wind snapped them with ease

When one gave up and came crashing down there were no strong limbs reaching to catch their fall

And the great woods became a desert of confusion and complacency

And loneliness-

I came seeking shelter amongst the great pines again,

But these are not the woods I had known as a child.

The Desert

This is a desert in more ways than one-

Feeble hands plant daisy’s that won’t grow in sand,

That is to say, you have complacently accepted that what you plant will not grow

Even as you place seedlings in the ground you have already reconciled yourself to their failure

And I can’t sleep because wilting flowers keep me up at night

So I travel to the Joshua trees and sage brush to gather white petals

From your abandoned stalks that I could never stop believing in

That is to say, I will go the distance to try and save what you have given up on

That I will believe in possibility and hope even when you shake your head at me

All the while my passion blooms in places you swore could not support pretty things

While you stay ever busy burying your legs in red ant hills

So you can complain that they bite your ears

That is to say, You like your misery so much that you tend it like a garden,

While the daisy’s you could have nurtured are left to burn in your ignorance.