A World of Possible Flowers

"There are many dark places;but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."--J.R.R. Tolkien

 

If the love never came you must have been

Dragging your feet. If the hatred carved your dreams

Into warning signs, you must have been looking in

The wrong direction for that ever-glorious ghost army.

 

If the love never stayed lit in the hills

You must have been asleep in the hay. If

The eyes of the angels turned to stone you

Must have been dipping your hands into the wrong

 

Fountain. If the love dissolved into the rug like

An imaginary spill you must have been lost in

The crumpled lane of clothes on your floor. If

The game was thrown into the garbage by mistake

 

You must have forgotten your own name when you

Were asked to sign for your soul. If love

Is too tired to continue you must be feeling

Pretty much alone by now. There is a sea

 

Of nothing but broken stones, but if love were

To sail there, each one would sprout, and where

The hint of a green continuation begins so begins

The trickle of a world of possible flowers. If

 

Love never came down the road there would be

No need to go anywhere ever again. If the

Hate can make you wonder what is the point

Of an organic truth, you must give up your

 

Dancing shoes forever. If the love never came we

Never existed anyway. If the love never came we

Never got the chance to say out loud the

Whispered promises of the graceful winds at our bursting

 

backs. Nothing is over just because everything is changed

or changing. The love comes from you or it

comes from nowhere. If the love never came you

must have been spending your money at the race

 

track of the current lies. If the love never

came you must have given them the wrong street

For delivery. If hate can make you nail your

Windows shut the sun might as well go home.  dp

Bonus poem:

   Heads Cracked Open/ A History Lesson by Darryl Price

 

We did what we thought was right, they

did what they knew was wrong.  We did

the thing that seemed to bring the most

joy to the most people, they did what

brought in the most stolen cash. We did

a ghost dance to establish a new pattern

of courage in the wind, they did the

same old slump down and fired the first

 

killing shot. We stitched a piece of homemade

art out of a piece of wretchedly long

pain and turned it into something that could

fly and make people smile and laugh, they

did a complete turn-around; they sank their long,

hollow drilling teeth into every exposed neck of

suffering land left, sucking everything into manufactured magnetized

barrels to be packed underground in hidden military

 

compounds, next to the tons of blinking robot

brains. We did bring our beat-up instruments to

the block party, ready to make a kind

of noisy prayer, together out of the whole

amazing experience, they brought weather balloons full of

spy cameras. We did get our flower heads

cracked open by brainwashed walls of bloody clubbing

men, they did rejoice later in the newspaper

 

aftermath with sealskin umbrellas and tiger paw loafers.

We did continue to make a faint celebratory

noise, coming from the forest floor like a

sudden spray of little white blossoms peeking over

a gently rotting log, they continued to bulldoze

every other species into extinction. We did want

you to be safe and happy, unafraid to

dream, to think for yourself, to choose something

 

weirdly independent, to learn the beauty to forgive,

to make many growing mistakes, to continue to

grow, they did only what was best for

them and no others were ever given the

slightest concern. We did love the wild things,

even the dangerous ones, they dug up the

oceans, held them hostage, and charged people all

their life savings just to see them again.