Roses
Stems have been broken,
Like spines wreck themselves to build all over again
To make a flower out of seed
and to find themselves blooming
from root to flower
I find myself burdened in all that is Creation
This tale of being all that holds up a Nation
But yet broken down to dust, in the name of Tradition
I’ve learnt recently that when you subject a wild rose to trauma,
It grows into an Outkast, a Tree,
draping itself with an array of thorns and milk like petals,
weeds trying to find solace between twigs and stones
and like bitter bones they remain fractured,
finding home in a place where they do not belong
It appears, I have been overthrown by a forest,
Mosses, have grown where once water laid,
Trying to harvest from good ground that only weeps,
Find myself drowning in ponds of wallow,
Lotuses now embodying me
Green and yellow, I shine like the first sight of sprouting in the spring,
I’ve learnt recently that the wilderness is for people like me,
That roses really do grow out of dirt,
That even while drowning they rise,
Even with no guidance, they rise in hope that they will follow the Sun,
in hope the bees will come to suck the only sweetness out, nectar,
in hope to be a home for birds, birthing nests to form new borns
amongst adversities it seems the strong ones sway amongst soiled homes,
I heard a fire struck
my Stem became broken,
I struggled to lift this flower of mine and
and fought to carry its weight
They told me that the Roots were damaged from birth
that umbilical cords were shredded
that there was no soil for the home in me,
that even the earth,
that this mud and ink I grew from rejected me when sown,
So here I must stand,
As a flower of the Sun,
I nestle strong despite my thorns
causing the trickle of blood from pickers,
Who’d rather break me at my stems to envision my beauty,
Then to leave me to grow and allow me to prostrate to the stars
I a Rose must find beauty in what was once so Ugly.