no. 3

VISCUM ALBUM

Your lover will come to you in the form
Of bird feces.
Your lover will appear independent
At the start.
Your lover, after one year, will penetrate
Your rough skin.
Your lover, hereinafter, will rely on you
For all their needs.
Your lover will never leave
You.
Your lover, little did you know, is poison
To your being.

WISTERIA

Resting on the edge of a Galician pasture
You take a minute to dance the
Shadow dancey dance
You dance the
Shady shadow dance
And you

Can barely see the workings of the pasture
As you dance and fall
Obsessively in love
With your shady shadow dance
And you

Look beautiful to those departing the pasture
Bouncing light as air the hair
Which required half a century to grow

Oh

How you

Dreamily lose yourself in the toxicity of the pasture
Seeping onto your shadowy shade floor
Harmful strangeling
And you

Continue to dance behind the edge of the pasture
As the smell of dead grapes encompass
Your wistful shady dance
And you

MONSTERA DELICIOSA

Part subterranean,
Part air breather,
Part ultraviolet,
Part shadow.

You reside away from the sky.

How you survive on selflessness
Seducing everything beneath you
To scream of gusto.

You all-too-trusting,
Good-for-nothing,
Chunk-of-beauty, you.

Your handsome hands,
Their tender coated cuticles,
Your brilliant curves;

No wonder
Everyone wants
A piece of you.

The shape of your holes calculated
To please all those around you
Whether you love them or not.

You straight-up-tease,
Kisser-of-the-breeze,
Delicious monster, you.

ZAMIOCULCAS

Cerebrum wrapped in soil
picky little bastard

Shines reflecting from
your tough, dark skin
I didn’t take you
for a dreamer

Visiting you once every two weeks
wet little bastard

Sprouting erections from
your tough, dark stem
I didn’t take you
for a lover

Cerebrum wrapped in soil
Pretentious little bastard

How you invaded my space
as if your stems and your skin
deserved a place
beside me

Ripped up cerebrum scattered in
soil into tiny brain parts

I never thought
splitting the parts of you
would turn me into
a wizard

TILLANDSIA USNEOIDES

Exquisitely so,
No thing manages to manifest alike.
Traveling with the wind,

You find your home from time to time;
Between the storms,
Or between the arms.

Mystic beard.
Greenish grey.
A true native
To the riverbanks of
The south.

Rootless, boundless,
As you leave your traces behind,
A touch of poise.

Neither love you nor hate you, the way
you dangle in spaces
Heavy, yet light.

Taken, sometimes.
Broken, most times.
And you simply
Continue to grow
Your grey hair long.

VICTORIA AMAZONICA
I am your erroneous mother,
She assures you.
Top trust, one after another,
With a vague intonation, she’ll say.

Sit inside of my body,
She directs you,
Atop my ribs I saved a place
For you between the air to lay.

Her beauty, the blooming.
A layered white virgin
Opening her fruits,
Abiding for two whole days.

She covers you in pedals,
Disillusioned with care,
You slowly wake to
A lingering dusk and delay.

She is now he.
A masculine creature of
Some overnight decision.
Plus a will to naturally obey.

That what yesterday allured
you:
Songs of an aggregate fruit
Bouncing atop a waterbed,
Tarnished like a stroke fades one away.

The disillusionment of purity.
The wet whiteness of her body
Plunge a stained lilac,
Leaves you now astray.

Oh mother, you will cry out.
For you never thought
Two days would feel so long.
In tune for the song to replay.