Night-blooming Orchid

I feel as though I'm speaking Chinese in an Italian bakery,
Listing meat marinades
in detail
to an audience of Vegans,
Accidentally of course
For I did not mean to bring this six
to the A.A. meeting—
I was only picking up a few bobs on the way home,
Only trying to ease the chore-load
on my sweet mother.

Do you get what I mean
oh ye of cryptic poetic words,
Do you understand why I cry at night over my orchids?

I tend them and paint them,
I mix their metaphors as if my children really were my own children,
And when it gets fucked up,
When I’m driving the wrong way down a one-way street
But my destination was the salvation of the human heart,
How do you think I can find the strength to pull myself out of the shit
With everyone laughing and pointing:
“Look at him! Look at him! He’s in the asshole!?”

Well friends I do,
And my pockets now are filled with fertilizer
Rich, rich fertilizer,
The waste of you and you and you.

My orchids,
My garden
Will now delight the moon,
And even if no one sees my perfect blooms,
My brilliant, colourful children,
I will know I created beauty
At least for the moment
There, in the
Impenetrable darkness,
The unseen gloom
of my tiny
fractured mind.







**************