Thread: Rose petals

From your eyes
drop two yellow rose petals.
Sweetly fragranced blooms
delicately bruised
and as such their scent
can be sensed
all around this room.

Your lips,
budded roses,
are filled with beads of water;
though the cavernous hole of your mouth
hides sleepy petals
dark red as blood.
Gnarly teeth.
As you speak
you spit thorns.

What garden you have inside you!
What garden locked,
the rusted gates.
Its key worn tight
behind your right
eye socket
would need tiny scalpals,
or fine gauged needle
from the back of a
medicine cabinet.
Experienced expert fingers
if I were ever to unlock it.

Enter the garden
and on my entrance
a yellow rain of roses.
The fragrance overcomes us.
Dappled light,
lining the path
with bruised petals.
I would wipe away each yellowed tear.
Collect them,
sort by size and shade.
Make potpourri.
Contain it in ornate jars,
keep it about my house.

But I, oh, I have soft fingers,
and thorns do draw blood.
Potpourri gets stale with time,
gathers dust.
Potpourri is just
dead roses.

There is a reason
flower arranging is left to experienced women.
There is a reason.
I was never one for gardening.

C Curtis. WOW! What an incredibly fine poem you wrought. Imagery abounding. A thourougly enjoyable read. Read it again just for the pleasure then again with the critic's eye.

Now, I wouldnt change one word of the following which happens to be my very favorite piece. Maybe, I'm biased because I mostly write "dark". You did a suburb job! However, it struck "so hard" it seemed to stand on it's own away from the rest of the poem which is almost too beautiful in comparison.

What garden you have inside you!
What garden locked,
the rusted gates.
Its key worn tight
behind your right
eye socket
would need tiny scalpals,
or fine gauged needle
from the back of a
medicine cabinet.
Experienced expert fingers
if I were ever to unlock it.

The rest is strongly romanced e.g. the use of "sweetly", fragrance, potpourri...I think you could strike more of a balance if you replaced some words which are a bit less lovely. Keep in just enough of the lovely. This is not a re-write just a couple of examples so more of a balance could be struck.

Just general ideas: "Sweetly fragrenced blooms"/strong scent of birthed petals.
It reads a little harder complimenting the stanza I singled out.

"Your lips
budded roses
are filled with beads of water;"/

Crimson lips
rose buds awakened
filled with water beads..then immediately to:

though the cavernous hole of your mouth
hides sleepy petals
dark red as blood.
Gnarly teeth.
As you speak
you spit thorns.

The ending is quite brilliant!

A very strong poem you have here! Laurie

Human beings are complex creatures. Just when you think you know someone, their personality grows deeper and you discover greater depths of happiness and pain, all of which you wish you could understand better. The more we learn, the more we find we do not understand.
Well done.

Laurie-
I'm so glad you enjoyed reading! Thank you.
I appreciate your crit and agree that the poem could be better balanced between stanzas and perhaps a little less syrupy in places. I'm working on an edit and I'll re-post. Your suggestions were a great start-point, especially liked "Crimson lips/rose buds awakened/filled with water beads..." so thanks again.
Robert-
"The more we learn, the more we find out we do not understand".
Exactly! If only I knew... but then there would be no poem like this one. I'm glad you saw that message in here. Thank you.