The Gentle Monstrosity

of a Silk Flower in Winter

It was at it’s best

wanting nothing,

coveting nothing, 

desiring nothing.

Only then

was it

at peace,

the creation

of a mad man’s

urge

to re-make

his world.

Look closer

and you may see 

it as a Picasso

in a ghetto,

a Monet

in a slum.

Ferociously alive 

in a world

of banal 

conformity,

it lives as

 pure poetry

openly weeping

in the marketplace,

unable to

sell itself.

It feels things

with grotesque

discomfort.

Nothing matters more

to it than love.

Yet as it’s seams

dissolved

so did it’s sex

wither.

It’s purpose

stank with a whiff

of desperation,

appearing

as lust-less

as a

middle aged

adolescent

lurching

like Byron

when he walked

towards the woman

he loved.

It’s red eyes

stay sore

in their sockets.

Everything

calls for bravery

as it takes in

too many

impressions

all at once.

It's implanted

heart and mind

are busy

sorting

the truth from

unforgiving facts.

Though it had been 

created

to reflect

the real,

(beauty was it’s maker’s

original intention),

despite being sewn

together from

patterned parts,
it would live forever

like the gentle monstrosity

of a silk flower in winter.

To survive

this world

it found it

necessary to

accept it's state

of artificiality;
without a signature scent

labels are

slippery things,

inadequate to
describe their possessors.

To it

grown people

seemed like

aggressive

sunflowers.

Children unnerved it;

tiny blanks

with too much 

courage.

It found it dreamt

far more than

it lived,

as if it’s

daily habits

were 

overshadowed

by a more

lurid fiction

embedded,

no, abandoned

by an

indifferent gardener.

Every possibility

rattled 

the cage of it’s

soft encasement; 

a living casket in

mock burial of an 

undigested seed.

Now it had begun

to have thoughts.

Here was it's first:

What if

existence

is my exile

and nothingness

my home?

Peter Valentyne

August 30th, 2019