[ 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 pours 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

© GaratheDen
© HeartOfBabel