POEM - Painting Flowers

As an artist

It’s good to have an obsession

A go-to thing

A place to land when stuck

I paint flowers

Not real ones

Just generic representations

And it does nothing

For my poetry

All those dumb flowers

Just sit there

Mute splashes of color

Festering and taunting

Acting like they want to help

Assist in the dismissal

Of mental blockage

But I don’t write about flowers

That’s the Romantics

Garnished with knights

And chivalry and fair maidens

All that historical mysticism fantasy

Now dismissed

As archaic and non-topical

Unfit for the enlightened

Of the post-modern discipline

But I’m a modern

I believe in fantasy

And I like the lilting oration

Unabashed Shakespearian fare

And to make flowers appear

All over my waiting canvas

Flowers that would make a botanist weep

For the loss of reason

The artist must surely have suffered

I mean, these are crazy flowers, man

Genus and species a violation

Of all the rules of biology