And The City Smiles

 One flower, soaring over thorn
Hedges, set against brick, in your eyes
Lovelier than the forest-born,

 Curses you and your world. Forlorn,
Underneath its serene disguise,
One flower, soaring over thorn

 Mourns its plucked sisters, early shorn
By your brick city, whose blue skies,
Lovelier than the forest-born,

 Hide wilting buds in dark rooms. Torn
Between its grief and the sunrise,
One flower, soaring over thorn

 Watches your ecstasies with scorn,
Chuckles over your cloying lies,
Lovelier than the forest-born,

 Your faux paeans. This fury, worn
Glowingly, shall spell your doom, cries
One flower, soaring over thorn

 I shall hunt you with hound and horn
To avenge my lost kin. So dies
One flower, soaring over thorn
Lovelier than the forest-born;

 And the City smiles, knowing you love it
Even more. Like salt. Like bread. Like anguish.

 Grasshoppers On Insecticide Day

  They fled after the first murders, and sought
The plainest leaves they could find, those furthest
From the doomed, glowing petals that had brought
Death, fought for obscurity and for rest;

And their torn hearts, breaking, would have shaken
The stern resolve in the gloved hands that bound
Their fate to those acid showers,
But for the butterfly.

  In the sturdy bareness of their refuge
They trusted, and never dreamt of the can,
Of the twitching fingers, of the deluge
That would snap them off in so short a span;

And their torn hearts, breaking, would have taken
Her head with them, but for the tendrils wound
About the brain's wilting flowers,
But for the butterfly.

  The Hunt That Never Ended

 They hunt with ferocity and with speed,
The child. The boy. The heir.
They hunt, prodding cot and rick, paying heed
To neither curse nor plea.

 They hunt, and she unsheathes her gilded knife
So slender, but sharp, sharp ...
They hunt; if a mother must weep for life,
It must - will - not be her.

 They hunt, and the mother hides in the hay
Inches below their steel
Cradling her child. She's holding them at bay,
By the force of her will. 

 The sky's grim thundering takes up her call,
And its tears, like hers, roar:
'Let the empire rise, let the empire fall;
But let my baby live.'