Oleander

Even a beautiful flower can have a touch of venom

Like a hand caressing a cheek

It may feel like an act of compassion, but sometimes

Affection is deceptive indeed

Then the poison starts to release and then set in

Soaking into pores with speed

Till it flows through the veins, plotting course to the heart

And your only hope then is to bleed

No matter the beauty portrayed in display

All warning lost to the breeze

Externals admired seduced to a gaze

Blind to the threats of disease

As the sun reflects colors and passions, desires

Holding you without any unease

Remember, nothing is too sacred to leave you devoured

Paralyzing the heart as it’s seized

To uproot the flower that weeds in the wild

Trying to then tame it with care

Is a fool of an errand to jester in smile

A tragedy sprung unaware

For no matter how tender, how kind you have gardened

Your intentions though pure in affair

Just a taste of a petal can corrupt your whole nature

Poisoning you to despair

For a scent is a sense, but a heart without caution

Beats to the mercy of time

Ignore ache and lament through the sweet smell of nectar

Numbing itself from design

Lured by longing, coerced by a feeling

Ensnared by emotion’s decline

Leading life to a fiction, to foil existence

Where innocence becomes the crime

So enamored by the dreams, these fields seem fantastic

That you fail to grasp of the roots

Veiled from your sight, in the seeing of life

To maintain to this dangerous pursuit

Where perceptions of joy mask the truth to a void

That the mind has been held to pollute

And you’ve reached out in vain, to make such a claim

In an act that will never hold fruit

Flowers focus attention while you keep to shadows

To toil and nurture and hope

So attentive to nature, your nature receding

Retracting to demands and reproach

All the blood and the sweat and energy extinguished

The roots, deeply seeded, control

Despite all sacrifice, and this withering life

Imperfection’s eternally loathed

Watch them blossom and bloom and beacon to you

The illusions of all that you crave

You exhaust of the view, but refuse that it’s true

After all, you’ve already forgave

Growing weaker and bleaker, a soul to beseech her

Now conformed in the ways to behave

You’ve consumed the last venom that’s sent you to heaven

Just an ornament set to your grave

The wild holds beauty, but most of it’s calloused

Readied with poisonous sting

Finding strength in deception, receptions of violence

To bury all love that may cling

For weakness is meek, and the humble devoured

Raising a tyrant of kings

And the hues of this flower, now changing its colors

For a victim of another spring